Zen and the Art of New York Times Headline Writing
The New York Times has just published one of the most insane headlines I have ever seen it publish, which is really saying something.
“Gaza’s Deadly Aid Deliveries,” the title blares.
If you were among the majority of people who only skim the headline without reading the rest of the article, you would have no idea that Israel has spent the last few days massacring starving civilians at aid sites and lying about it. You would also have no idea that it is Israel who’s been starving them in the first place.
Who keeps shooting and killing starving Palestinians during “aid deliveries”? Who starved them in the first place? pic.twitter.com/IljdDFmuT6
— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) June 4, 2025
The headline is written in such a passive, amorphous way that it sounds like the aid deliveries themselves are deadly. Like the bags of flour are picking up assault rifles and firing on desperate Palestinians queuing for food or something.
The sub-headline is no better: “Israel’s troops have repeatedly shot near food distribution sites.”
Oh? They’ve shot “near” food distribution sites, have they? Could their discharging their weapons in close proximity to the aid sites possibly have something to do with the aforementioned deadliness of the aid deliveries? Are we the readers supposed to connect these two pieces of information for ourselves, or are we meant to view them as two separate data points which may or may not have anything to with one another?
The article itself makes it clear that Israel has admitted that IDF troops fired their weapons “near” people waiting for aid after they failed to respond to “warning shots”, so you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what happened here. But in mains
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