The size and placement of NYT picture of "Gaza starving child" was virtually unprecedented ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

The size and placement of NYT picture of "Gaza starving child" was virtually unprecedented

This was the (top part of) front page of the New York Times on July 25 featuring what appears to be a starving, emaciated Gaza child.

I just went through the front pages of the New York Times for the past 365 days. Not once has it positioned a photo in this extraordinary way.

Usually the NYT will feature a photo that is four columns wide, and that photo is always wider than it is tall (landscape). For example, here is the front page from yesterday, illustrating the mass shooting in Manhattan.

Once every couple of months it has a feature photo that is five columns wide, also in landscape orientation.

The largest photo of the past year was for Trump's inauguration, and this one was unusual in that it was in a portrait orientation, not landscape.

But I could not find a single example of a four column photo in portrait orientation on the right side of the page, where the top story headline normally is.

Also I could not find any other photos that featured a suffering child above the fold on the front page over the year. No starving children in Somalia or Sudan where hundreds die every day.

The editors made a decision that this single picture was perhaps the most important photo of the year, placing it where even casual reader would subconsciously recognize that this is a huge story.

Yesterday, the NYT published an editor's note about the child in that picture at the bottom of the online article:

Editors’ Note: July 29, 2025
This article has been updated to include information about Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, a child in Gaza suffering from severe malnutrition. After publication of the article, The Times learned from his doctor that Mohammed also had pre-existing health problems.

This photo, featured and highlighted in a way that is rarely seen in the newspaper, was misrepresented as if it is the way Gaza is. And now they add an "oops!" - not an apology, not a retraction, but a small note saying, "You know that huge photo that we shoved in your faces? Well, it had a slight problem. But no worries - our anti-Israel propaganda was fully successful. Mission accomplished. This note that practically no one will see lets us claim that we are responsible journalists."

Here's the editor's note in context of the entire online article - the small red box on the bottom.

The New York Times checked all the boxes of published journalistic ethics. Yet when you look at the entire story, you see that the entire episode from photo placement, to photo size, to lack of awareness that nearly all similar photos over the past year were of previously sick children, to the note that is not a correction and non-apology, is a far cry from ethical.