The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept.
The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by internally displaced Palestinians, who fled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.
While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives.
Almost immediately after the October 7 attacks and the launch of Israel’s scorched-earth war against Gaza, tensions began to boil within the newsroom over the Times coverage. Some staffers said they believed the paper was going out of its way to defer to Israel’s narrative on the events and was not applying even standards in its coverage. Arguments began fomenting on internal Slack and other chat groups.
It’s related to Humanism or in more general terms a concern for the well-being of others and not just of oneself, which is a core, anchoring principle of the Left.
That’s not to say that rightwingers are all mean or that leftwingers are all nice to other people, it’s more saying that anybody whose political position is derived from their own personal principles (rather than tribalism or wholesale mindless acceptance of pre-packaged ideologies) if they have higher empathy will tend to favour the side that at the very least tries to balance the common good with personal greed, not the side that sells only personal upside maximization.
On the Left you can still end up with ideologies that are ideologically layered so thickly, so heavilly and so inflexibly on that foundation of the greater good principle, that de facto they do harm to the many whilst claiming they’re doing it for the greater good (Soviet Style Communist being a good example).
Don’t mix up America’s Me First conservatism with all right wing ideology. There’s plenty of authoritarian states that have used the idea of a communal good to rally support. There’s even some delivery on that, as long as you’re in the good group. The only real differences I’ve ever been able to find are in the form of government (elections vs shredders), inclusivity vs exclusivity, and the details of the social safety net. (Don’t become unproductive in a far right country unless you’re rich)
For example if we took all the videos of “good” Germans doing fun stuff from 1935 to 1942 out of context it would look like a pretty nice place to live. Hitler did try to make his base happy. That is of course the most extreme example, but it’s repeated over and over again at lower levels.
That’s a good point.
The difference between the Left and the Right in the old days tended to be more about the means to make your country a better place (and who you were willing to sacrifice for it), so as a leftie you could actually respect some rightwingers even whilst disagreeing with them because the goals were mostly the same and the big differences were in the path to get there.
Now, in the day and age of Neoliberal Capitalism (which is far from only an American thing) the difference between Left and Right is the difference between the goal being maximization of the common good or individual upside maximization.