The New York Times appeared to quietly change a headline about a “flood of pro-Israel money” leading to Tuesday’s lopsided primary defeat of Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y.
Bowman, an outspoken critic of Israel, suffered a double-digit primary defeat on Tuesday to Westchester County Executive George Latimer, a pro-Israel moderate Democrat. The race was defined in part by the bitter schism within the party over Israel and its war in Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack.
The New York Times’ initial headline about Bowman’s loss, “Bowman Falls in House Primary, Overtaken by Flood of Pro-Israel Money,” was quickly criticized on social media.
“The New York Times is blaming the Jews for Jamaal Bowman’s loss,” conservative radio host Ari Hoffman wrote on X to accompany a screengrab of the headline. “Did you guys consider that he was a crappy congressman?”
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The Times edited the headline to, “Bowman Falls to Latimer in a Loss for Progressive Democrats.” It is unclear when the change was made.
“Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York, one of Congress’s most outspoken progressives, suffered a stinging primary defeat on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, unable to overcome a record-shattering campaign from pro-Israel groups and a slate of self-inflicted blunders,” the report reads.
The New York Times did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bowman has been outspoken about his support for Palestinians amid the war in Gaza and has charged that Israel has committed genocide. He was targeted by roughly $14 million in spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel group that supported Latimer.
Bowman had already created headaches for himself with his embarrassing fire alarm incident last year; he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor after pulling the alarm to delay a vote on Capitol Hill.
He also weathered headlines over promoting conspiracy theories about September 11 being an inside job before joining Congress, and he recently apologized after initially denying Hamas members committed rape and sexual assault on Oct. 7.
As Bowman regularly attacked AIPAC, journalist David Zweig had predicted how media outlets would frame Bowman’s defeat.
“Bowman was trailing Latimer by 17 points on April 3, before AIPAC even began its ad campaign. If/when Bowman loses keep this in mind when all the pundits spin their narratives,” Zweig posted on X prior to the primary.
After the election, Zweig shared the original Times headline and wrote, “Right on cue… legacy media crafting narratives disconnected from facts. Latimer led Bowman by 17 points *before* the AIPAC ad blitz.”
Others also criticized the initial Times headline:
In 2019, Times columnist Bret Stephens said about his employer, “The Times has a longstanding Jewish problem … continuing into the present day in the form of intensely adversarial coverage of Israel.”
Stephens was responding to the Times being forced to apologize in 2019 for running an antisemitic cartoon of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in its international division.
Fox News Digital’s Danielle Wallace, Hannah Grossman and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
