NYT censors ban the G-word. But their plan backfires

“The refusal of The New York Times to run paid digital ads that call for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza is an outrageous attempt to sidestep the truth.”

The missing word here is “Gaza”.

It started out as a simple ad buy. The Quaker peace group American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), as they have done for years, purchased an online ad in the New York Times calling for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. But when the Times censors told the group to use the word “war” instead of “genocide,” AFSC did the right thing and pulled the ad.

“The refusal of The New York Times to run paid digital ads that call for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza is an outrageous attempt to sidestep the truth,” said Joyce Ajlouny, general secretary for the AFSC, in a press release. “Palestinians and allies have been silenced and marginalized in the media for decades as these institutions choose silence over accountability. It is only by challenging this reality that we can hope to forge a path toward a more just and equitable world.”

The AFSC has been supporting humanitarian efforts in Gaza and lobbying in the US for a “permanent cease-fire, full humanitarian access, release of all who are held captive, and an end to US military funding for Israel.”

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Earlier the Times had instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept. I don’t know how Times reporters are expected to cover the rulings in The Hague where the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip from the risk of genocide.

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NYT’s despicable act comes a week after the Bezos-owned Washington Post banned a cartoon by their Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes portraying America’s oligarchs running to pay homage to Donald Trump. Telnaes also did the right thing and left the Post.

But there are two great ironies here.

From Jewish Insider

While the oligarch-owned mainstream media continues to control nearly all of what we’re allowed to see and hear, the truth, or at least its multiple versions, still can find its way. AFSC’s anti-genocide story is all over the global media this morning, giving it much more play than its paid digital ad would have received. Similarly, Ann Tellanes' toons are getting far more attention than ever.

The second great irony is the MAGAs are now occupying the “free-speech” territory and have forced media barons like Zuckerberg and Musk to drop their so-called “fact-checking” and reopen their pages to Trump. It wasn’t so long ago that Trump was threatening to ban TikTok, calling Facebook “an enemy of the people,” and threatening to send “election fraudsters”—Mark Zuckerberg included—to prison.

Bizarro World — Now, it’s the Democrats who want to deny the voices of anti-genocide activists and who are calling for more screening of social media. Party leaders like Hillary Clinton are suggesting that critics be civilly or even, in some cases, “criminally charged" for their social media posts.