NY Times offices vandalised after emaciated Gaza baby correction

Pro-Palestinian vandals have daubed the offices of The New York Times with red paint and slogans after the newspaper admitted it had published a misleading picture of a ‘starving’ baby in Gaza.

Pro-Palestinian vandals have daubed the offices of The New York Times with red paint and slogans after the newspaper admitted it had published a misleading picture of an emaciated baby in Gaza.

Videos on social media show The NY Times’s glass frontage covered in paint and the slogan: “NYT lies, Gaza dies.”

After the NY Times apologize and retracted from the Gaza starving Hoax, the pro Hamas crowd was angry and vandalized their building pic.twitter.com/w7Y4cP0NHN

— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) July 30, 2025

On Wednesday (AEST) the newspaper admitted an error in publishing the image after it emerged the child featured had been diagnosed with pre-existing health conditions.

The photograph showing toddler Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq wearing a plastic bag for a nappy while being cradled in his mother’s arms was run on the newspaper’s front page with the headline “Young, old and sick starve to death in Gaza”.

It was also published by a number of other media organisations last week, including the ABC, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, BBC, CNN, The Times and Sky.

In a post on X, The New York Times said the newspaper had added an editors’ note to its story after learning “after publication ... that (Muhammad) also had pre-existing health problems”.

“We have since learned new information, including from the hospital that treated him and his medical records, and have updated our story to add context about his pre-existing health problems,” it said in its statement.

Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett accused The New York Times of “blood libel” over the image.

“This is simply unbelievable,” Mr Bennett wrote in a post on X. “After generating a tsunami of hate towards Israel with that terrifying picture, the NYT now quietly admits that the boy has pre-existing conditions. NYT, you knew that Hamas uses babies with pre-existing illnesses. We’ve been saying this for months now. You knew exactly what this picture would cause. This is a blood libel in 2025. Have you no shame?”

The NYT correction came after Jewish journalist David Collier, who alleges he uncovered the evidence proving the photograph was misleading, accused international media of becoming Hamas’s “useful idiots”.

“It is the basic role of a journalist to verify and check the facts before he writes a story, so the question is, is the image an honest image or a dishonest one?” he said.