The Washington Institute for Near East Policy is releasing an analysis this morning accusing the Washington Post, which has been widely criticized for its coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza, of “abuse of anonymous sourcing” in its coverage of the conflict. The report comes the same day that the paper included an editor’s note in its print edition over a headline of a story about Hezbollah’s attack on Israel. 

The report, authored by Washington Institute Executive Director Robert Satloff, is based on the institute’s database for reporting on the war, which collected 436 articles in total from seven major media outlets, 379 of which “drew from an anonymous or confidential source who was a government or organizational official or someone described as being knowledgeable about sensitive political, military, or diplomatic issues.”

The Post, according to the report, “was responsible for 72% of all the citations of Gaza-related unofficial anonymous sources — more than five times as many as both The New York Times and all the other major U.S. media platforms combined.” 

“Quite apart from accusations of advocacy, bias, or partisanship, these findings point to serious professional journalistic failings that distinguish the Post from the other six U.S.-based media organizations included in the database,” Satloff writes. 

“Indeed, abuse of anonymous sourcing at the Post appears to be a systemic problem, with responsibility that runs from correspondents in the field to the most senior editors in Washington. This may not be the reason the Post is currently going through convulsive change, but one can only hope that it comes out at the other end with this problem fixed.”

In his analysis, Satloff contrasts the Post’s use of anonymous sources with that of The New York Times, saying that the latter “appears to have done a commendable job of following its in-house rules on use of anonymous sources in its Gaza war reportage.”

“Unlike the Post, which frequently drew upon anonymous sources for colorful quotations or scene-setting observations, other news media generally restricted such use to providing factual information not available elsewhere. As for the New York Times specifically, it cited unnamed local people more than any media platform besides the Post, but all eight stories did so to relate factual information,” he says. “In none of the Times’s articles is the unnamed source given a platform to offer an opinion or just provide additional color.”

The analysis references five stories where “the anonymous source in the Post was the main subject of an article,” with Satloff saying that “each of these stories was itself problematic.”

He points to one story published on Nov. 17, 2023, later updated on Dec. 28, “alleging a purposeful Israeli policy of separating Gazan mothers from their premature babies allowed to be born in Israeli or West Bank hospitals.”

Satloff notes his Times of Israel piece criticizing the article, which alleges “numerous violations of journalistic practice, which led to the Post re-reporting the story and issuing an apology and a correction.”

That article, entitled “Israel’s war with Hamas separates Palestinian babies from their mothers,” now has a lengthy editor’s note, part of which acknowledges that the story “mischaracterized some aspects of Israeli rules for permits that allowed some Palestinian women, before Oct. 7, to travel from Gaza to give birth at hospitals in the West Bank and Israel.”

“The article incorrectly said that all Palestinian mothers who received authorization to leave Gaza for humanitarian reasons had to return to Gaza to reapply after their permits expired. In fact, it was not always necessary for mothers to return to Gaza. The article has been updated to specify that it was hospital officials who told two Palestinian mothers that they needed to return to Gaza to apply for new permits,” the note reads. 

The editor’s note also says that the outlet “neglected to seek comment from Israeli officials for this article, an omission that fell short of The Post’s standards for fairness.”

The most recent editor’s note in Tuesday’s print edition — the third time in seven months that the paper has acknowledged shortcomings over its coverage of Israel — relates to a story on the outlet’s website with the headline “Israel strikes deep in Lebanon after rocket attack, stoking fear of wider war.” In the print version of the story on Monday, the headline read: “Israel hits targets in Lebanon,” without mention of the Hezbollah rocket attack that killed 12 children on a soccer field in a Druze town in Israel’s Golan Heights over the weekend. 

“The headline and subheadline that accompanied a July 29 Page One photo and article about Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon did not provide adequate context,” the note reads. “The headlines should have noted that the Israeli strikes were a response to a rocket strike from Lebanon that killed 12 teenagers and children in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. The photo depicted mourning for one of those victims, as the caption noted.”

The Post has faced scrutiny for its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war and surging antisemitism in the U.S. It received widespread criticism for publishing a news story earlier this month that criticized the parents of Israeli-American hostage Omer Neutra for not discussing the suffering in Gaza, despite interviewing the mother and father and including comments in the story from them that the situation in Gaza is “horrible.”

“The Post keeps failing to meet its commitment to fairness in stories about American Jews. I know it’s costing us our readers’ trust, because they’ve told me so. Top management needs to fix this ASAP,” a Post journalist, speaking on condition of anonymity, told JI in response to learning of the piece. 

The paper published a story in May suggesting that it was sinister for a group of Jewish business leaders to use their influence to advocate for the NYPD to clear out anti-Israel protesters from Columbia University’s campus.

Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for Adams, condemned the Post at the time for the line of questioning.

“Any suggestion that other considerations were involved in the decision-making process is completely false, and the insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all too familiar antisemitic trope that the Washington Post should be ashamed to ask about, let alone normalize in print,” Levy said.