The New York Times published a feature article “Smugglers in West Bank Open Door to Jobs in Israel, and Violence” examining how Palestinians are able to breach Israel’s security barrier looking for work inside Israel or in order to carry out acts of terror.
Throughout the story, the security barrier is referred to as a “wall”:
The wall, which Israel began building more than a decade ago to thwart the suicide bombers of the second intifada, is supposed to prevent Palestinian residents of the occupied West Bank from entering into Israel outside military checkpoints where their papers can be examined.
But the Palestinian man perched in a gap in the concertina wire that tops much of the snaking 400-mile route of the wall.
Readers are left with the mistaken impression that the barrier, 400 miles of it, is a wall. In fact, the security barrier is over 90% chain-link fence and sections of wall are to be found in specific locations only.
While those sections of the barrier that the New York Times focuses on are walled, the paper should make it clear that this is not the case elsewhere.
Further down in the story, the New York Times does refer to a fence. Nonetheless, this does not mitigate the missing context and information.
Why is this important? Israel’s security barrier is regularly portrayed by anti-Israel activists and the media as a monstrous concrete structure, drawing inaccurate and unfair comparisons with, for example, the Berlin Wall with all of its negative connotations, something that the New York Times has contributed to.
We’ve contacted the New York Times asking for a correction or clarification. Watch this space.
