The subtle and unsubtle bias of the New York Times

The Times’ narrative-steering is present again in a Monday front-page story entitled “Experts Believe Iran Conflict Is Less Likely.” This story was previously headlined “Chances of Iran Strike Receding, U.S. Officials Say,” but mysteriously changed.

Here, once again, a forest of qualifications means that the story doesn’t really report much. But while we hear that some people say that nobody knows what’s happening, and some people are pessimistic that the Obama administration’s efforts will bear any fruit at all, the main narrative thread, the impression that the reader is left with is that the Iranians are acting mature and flexible, and those meanie Israelis may not have an excuse to launch an attack after all.

A Martian reader, in fact, might conclude that the Israelis — whose judgment, we’re told, may have been “distorted” by “messianic feelings” — are the religious fanatics, while the Iranians “appeared more flexible and open to resolving the crisis than expected.” Thank goodness for those reasonable Iranians. Good thing they’re not crazy religious types like those Israelis!

Again, the plausible deniability is there, but the spin is one of Iranian reasonableness and Israeli intransigence — liberally lubricated with the suggestion that super-smart US diplomats (the source for the story, remember, as the original headline illustrated, before they were transmogrified into unidentified “experts”) have everything well in hand.