Israeli soldiers fired rubber bullets at Palestinian stone throwers in the West Bank town of Al Ram, near East Jerusalem, last month.
With civilians being slaughtered in Syria, it is curious that this article, and this photo, were deemed newsworthy enough to merit such a place of prominence in the newspaper of record. Was the subliminal message supposed to be that Israel, just like Syria, slaughters civilian demonstrators?
In any event, one major problem with the photo is that it clearly shows a cylindrical attachment at the end of the soldier's rifle, an attachment used to fire generally non-lethal rubber bullets -- in other words, a crowd control tool used by police and security forces around the world.
Another problem with the photo is that it was taken "last month." Not only is this month-old photograph not news, it also has nothing whatever to do with the story below it.
When we noticed the story at around 1 AM on March 8, CAMERA e-mailed Joseph Kahn, the paper's foreign editor, and since it was already 8 AM in Israel we also cc'd the author Ethan Bronner, even though the reporter would not generally have anything to do with the photo choice or caption. We have since heard back from Mr. Kahn who agreed the caption needed correcting.
This afternoon the Times did change the caption to read "Israeli soldiers fired rubber bullets..." However, there is as yet no note at the end of the story to indicate it has been corrected, and no indication that a correction will run in the printed version of the newspaper tomorrow.
While we appreciate Mr. Kahn's note, and the changed caption, much damage has already been done by the front-page photo and deceptive caption. There were a number of other problems with the story that also need correcting.
