The notoriously anti-Israel New York Times pushed back against claims that it had advance knowledge of the October 7th Hamas attack, releasing a letter stating that reports of photographers for the Times, CNN, AP, and others being embedded with Hamas were false. Sen. Tom Cotton issued a call for the New York Times and other outlets to be investigated for the potential of having committed crimes by having photographers embedded with Hamas. He also demanded that the news outlets answer serious questions about what they knew about their employees accompanying Hamas during the October 7th attack. The New York Times responded by accusing Cotton of “parroting disinformation,” insisting that “no employee of The Times was embedded with Hamas or had advance knowledge of the attack, or played any role in the savage massacre of that day.” Sounds like a straight-up denial at first glance, but it’s not. It’s likely true that no “employee” of the Times was embedded with Hamas. However, most photographers are not by definition employees. They are third-party contractors hired by news outlets to provide them with content. In other words, the Times’ “denial” doesn’t actually deny anything. Sen. Cotton noticed it. “What you don’t say is that your freelance photographers – pictured riding with the Hamas terrorists on 10/7 – had no advance knowledge. Is that also your claim?” he tweeted in response to the letter. Or as Joe Gabriel Simonson of the Free Beacon wryly put it: “Contractors provide many benefits to employers, such as lower payroll taxes, savings on benefits, and plausible deniability that they are members of a terrorist organization.” (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)