The paper has been having trouble explaining the answer, illuminating the challenges it faces covering the wars of Iranian aggression.
How many tries, by how many reporters, will it take the New York Times to explain accurately what Hezbollah is?
The newspaper has been fumbling and bumbling its way toward an answer in a way that illuminates some of the challenges the Times has faced in covering the wars of Iranian aggression.
Our story begins in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. “What Is Hezbollah, the Group That Poses a Threat to Israel From the North?” a Times article published on Oct. 19 tried to explain. That article, by a Beirut-based British freelancer for the Times, Euan Ward, and a staff writer for the New York Times magazine, Nicholas Casey, did not use the word “terrorist” or describe the US government’s designation of Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization. Instead the newspaper described the group as having “an expansive security apparatus and social services network.”