Bad Faith Hysteria Engulfs a New York Times Story on Starving Gazan Children

Screenshot of a video taken by Saher Alghorra for the New York Times report, “Gazans Are Dying of Starvation.”

The New York Times announced on Wednesday, to considerable hysteria, that an editor’s note had been appended to a report it published last week, titled “Gazans Are Dying of Starvation.”

In brief: one of the severely malnourished children cited in the story suffers from other “pre-existing health problems,” which were not mentioned in the initial version of the report.

A statement on the update, which sought to explain why additional information had been added to the piece, was posted to the Times communications account on X. The statement in full:

Children in Gaza are malnourished and starving, as New York Times reporters and others have documented. We recently ran a story about Gaza’s most vulnerable civilians, including Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, who is about 18 months old and suffers from severe malnutrition. We have since learned new information, including from the hospital that treated him and his medical records, and have updated our story to add context about his pre-existing health problems. This additional detail gives readers a greater understanding of his situation. Our reporters and photographers continue to report from Gaza, bravely, sensitively, and at personal risk, so that readers can see firsthand the consequences of the war.

What the initial version of the story included was this account: Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq — an 18-month-old child born during the war in Gaza, who lives in a tent on the beach with his mother and brother, and whose father was killed last year looking for food — has been diagnosed with severe malnutrition.

“I look at him and I can’t help but cry,” his mother, Hedaya al-Mutawaq, said. A photo was printed on the front page of last Friday’s paper, showing Hedaya cradling Mohammed’s emaciated body.

None of that has changed nor has any of it been corrected. In fact, when comparing the initial version of the report with the updated one, very little has been added. Only the following information:

Mohammed, according to his doctor, had pre-existing health problems affecting his brain and his muscle development. But his health deteriorated rapidly in recent months as it became increasingly difficult to find food and medical care, and the medical clinic that treated him said he suffers from severe malnutrition.

Of course, a child can have health problems and still die from hunger, a fate this harrowing Times report suggests Mohammed is on the path towards. In an interview with another outlet, his mother said her son’s condition has worsened as a consequence of malnutrition:

“My son Mohammed was born in December 2023, during the war, without any chronic illnesses,” Hedaya told Misbar. “Doctors diagnosed him with macrocephaly, which they said was caused by nutritional deficiencies during pregnancy due to the Israeli war.”

She emphasized that Mohammed was healthy and of normal weight at birth. “Over the past four months of displacement, his condition worsened due to the severe shortage of food. That is when he developed acute malnutrition.”

Yet the statement posted by the Times to X sparked a wave of outrage, with many prominent accounts arguing it disproved not only that Mohammed suffered from malnutrition — a belief that is not backed up by even the updated Times story — but also that it proved the hunger crisis in Gaza to be a fabrication.

Bill Ackman called the report in a post to X, “not just the reputational smear of a country,” but also “a call to violence against Jews.” In another post, he called the reporting “a crime” and called on Israel to “bring libel suits” against the Times and other news outlets. CNN commentator Scott Jennings declared: “Propaganda mission fulfilled. Great work everyone.” Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet warned: “This is a blood libel in 2025.”

Fox News covered the story throughout the day, describing the Times update as a “correction.”

“The damage has already been done,” lamented Fox & Friends host Lawrence Jones. His co-host Ainsley Earhardt suggested the update proves starvation in Gaza is a fabrication.

What makes the breadth and fervor of this meltdown so shocking is the fact that the substance of the Times report remains utterly unchanged. It is a thorough accounting of children suffering from starvation in a war zone. That one of those children also has pre-existing health problems does nothing to undermine the reality that (1) that child is dying of starvation (2) many children in Gaza are dying of starvation (3) the crisis is such that officials warn the besieged enclave and its two million people are on the brink of a devastating famine.

The Times story includes testimonials from doctors who say they are even struggling to feed themselves. It includes the story of a child who died from hunger at just four months old. It includes a doctor who said his hospital recorded “three deaths from malnutrition in the previous 36 hours,” including a five-month-old child.

In a statement on the backlash, Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha told Mediaite: “We are focused on accuracy and fairness and on making sure our reporting and photography reflect the human toll of this war fully and fairly. We will not be swayed by advocacy groups hoping to change our journalism to align with their perspectives.”

The bad faith nature of these attacks is apparently well understood within the Times newsroom. A senior staffer at the paper told Oliver Darcy in his Status newsletter: “Starvation is real and happening in Gaza and the attacks over this photo and the editors’ note are just the latest instance that we have experienced where truthful, independent reporting gets weaponized by groups representing these biased perspectives. It just gets weaponized by partisans to suggest this is propaganda or bias or somehow negates the idea that starvation and suffering is happening in Gaza.”

It’s not just the Times that is reporting on this worsening hunger crisis. NBC News has an equally shocking report that includes photos and videos of starving Gazan children. The Guardian recently published a harrowing testimonial from Nick Maynard, a renowned British surgeon now volunteering at a hospital in Gaza. He wrote of the experience:

I’m writing this from Nasser hospital in southern Gaza, where I’ve just finished operating on another severely malnourished young teenager. A seven-month-old baby lies in our paediatric intensive care unit, so tiny and malnourished that I initially mistook her for a newborn. The phrase “skin and bones” doesn’t do justice to the way her body has been ravaged. She is literally wasting away before our eyes and, despite our best efforts, we are powerless to save her. We are witnessing deliberate starvation in Gaza right now.

The “deliberate starvation” the doctor described is not disproved by the Times adding more context to the health history of one acutely malnourished child.

The unfortunate advantage that denialists have in this debate is that verifying the facts on the ground in Gaza is difficult. Israel has refused since the start of this war to allow outside journalists into the territory. And the Palestinian journalists who have been documenting the horrors within face the same dangers — death by bombing, bullets, or hunger — as the rest of the population.

What this story sadly proves is that all the fearless, clear-eyed journalism in the world doesn’t matter if audiences have been conditioned to deny reality. Objective journalism requires both objective reporting and objective consuming. No amount of the former can make up for an absence of the latter. What good does it do to hold up a microscope to the horrors of the world if readers decide to put on blindfolds?

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.