This market will resolve to "Yes" if The New York Times, on any of its official platforms, definitively states that Israel was not responsible for the hospital blast in Gaza. This could be in the form of a corrected article, a retraction, an updated headline, or a public statement explicitly attributing the blast to a different party (Hamas, PIJ, etc.). If The New York Times does not make such a definitive statement by November 1, 2023, the market will resolve to "No". Official New York Times publications and statements will be used to determine the resolution.
1,000
3.00@KarlVoskuil Relevant bit:
I try to avoid the journalistic sin known as bothsidesism when information favors one version of events over another. And while much about the hospital explosion remains unclear, the available evidence points toward a Palestinian rocket, not an Israeli airstrike, as the more likely cause.
“One of the legs of the stool — the videos of a rocket exploding in the sky — now looks a lot weaker than it did,” Julian said. “But the other pieces of evidence remain in place. And the overall conclusion of the American intelligence agencies appears sound: It was a malfunctioning Palestinian rocket that most likely hit the hospital.”
@MarcusAbramovitch out of curiosity, would you have resolved YES on this, had it been published before market close? It's not super "definitive" in its conclusion.
@chrisjbillington I would have resolved this yes. "It was a malfunctioning Palestinian rocket that most likely hit the hospital"
Just concluded this will probably resolve as No, despite my initial wager on Yes.
Major news agencies, especially the NYT, rarely ever "officially" offer absolute statements unless corroborated by the party in question...claims are usually qualified as "alleged" etc.
I don't anticipate an official acknowledgement that the Earth is not flat, either. Only that so and so claims it is not flat, or reporter x reported so and was contradicted by source z.
I'm not sure if I should make a market on this, but do you think it's possible that the NYT had this fake smoking gun nonsense just as a way to save face and not admit their initial mistake? The initial OSINT stuff didn't talk about that "smoking gun". What probability?
A priori it seems like an unlikely conspiracy theory, albeit far less unlikely than the one about the IDF hitting the hospital.
Inside the New York Times Debate Over Its Gaza Hospital Bombing Coverage https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/10/new-york-times-gaza-hospital-story
“Given Hamas’s role in this story, given that it had just attacked and murdered hundreds of Israelis, one thing that I’ve been trying to understand is it would have been easier to err on the side of caution,” Garcia-Navarro said. “I mean, this wasn’t a scoop by the Times. If there was any question whatsoever of who was responsible, wouldn’t it have been easier to sort of be very forthcoming with the audience about that and lean into the ongoing ambiguity, given the significance and the stakes of this? Why didn’t the Times do that?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/world/middleeast/gaza-hospital-israel-hamas-video.html
God the NYT is actually so annoying about this right now. They're moving at like a 1 week delay from OSINT
@BenjaminShindel
If they would move faster they'd embarrass themselves. Slow walking it back, making sure it looks complex in process.
@AmHa OSINT folks on Twitter came to the same conclusion last week I think, that this rocket was not related after all. I have been assuming that the various government intelligence orgs declaring that it was a failed PIJ rocket must have other evidence, but at this point we don't know what that evidence is.
@chrisjbillington Right. Article above mentions “several other pieces of evidence that have not been made public, including logs of military activity, information gleaned from radar systems, other audio intercepts and other videos.”
@AmHa Aha, managed to miss all of that, thank you.
Edit: well, Israel cites this evidence, I suppose we are assuming they have shared it with allies' intelligence orgs, which seems likely but isn't stated.
@AmHa And this is interesting
Asked about The Times’s findings, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said The Times and American intelligence agencies had different interpretations of the video.
Hopefully US intelligence wasn't relying on this video too much in drawing conclusions.
@AmHa so what do you all think happened? I heard from random on twitter that the blast wasn't consistent with weapons used by Hamas.
@will58c3 I think it’s highly likely it was a failed rocket from PIJ/Hamas. Market is ultimately about NYT though.
@chrisjbillington I wonder if the other evidence is relevant to the video itself—article doesn’t say anything about why the intel agencies’ “interpretations” are different. I guess it’s plausible that the OSINT guys just did a more competent analysis of that video than the intel agencies?
According to resolution I still consider this no, but now I’m unsure based on previous comments.
@JCE Big shift in tone from the ridiculous hedging of previous articles but still I don’t think it counts as a definitive statement from the Times itself.
@JCE This sentence, "The New York Times has not independently verified either side’s claims," combined with that insane article AmHa just posted, are what kept me from selling.