this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2026
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Inventing Reality
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When the media decides who you are rooting for.
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Axios didn't have a problem naming the perpetrators. And there's really not much to guess.
Sure it can occasionally, but the passive voice is used much more frequently when opponents of the empire are the victim of the attack. It's moreso a pattern than calling NYT out on a one-off.
Again, link to the article if you're going to cite/discuss its headline, please. Axios names a culprit in the headline because their source isn't just the word of the governments of Iran and Qatar. First line of the article:
Followed later by:
Edit (incidental): This is what the WSJ is reporting as a live update: more from US officials about the US' support of Israel's attack.
News like this is chaotic, so I appreciate organizations only reporting what they can confirm.
So anyone with even minimal knowledge of the conflict can assume that Israel did this but that doesn't mean one can report it without knowing.
But that should be motivation to write a headline that more accurately captures the situation. I do feel using a passive voice here is intentional and it's not hard to write a headline that captures the fact that Iran and Qatar believe Israel to be responsible.
NYT plays defense for imperialism and empire all the time though so this is just another example of that.
You're missing the point of a headline. A huge amount of people don't read past the headline. They will never read anything in the article, they only read the headline. This is why leaving key information out of the headlines (and frequently burying it far below the first sentence) is so damaging.
https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/social-media-users-probably-wont-read-beyond-headline-researchers-say
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/nosacredcows/2018/09/study-confirms-most-people-share-articles-based-only-on-headlines/
Good luck: this guy always, always capes for corporate media. He could easily fill in for u/jordanlund.
Honestly, I think that prioritizing first-to-press over accuracy is part of what's gotten us where we are now.