References:
Katie Rogers and Tyler Pager, “How Jared Kushner, a Self-Described ‘Deal Guy,’ Helped Broker a Gaza Breakthrough,” New York Times, Oct 9 2025.
Cranky Old Guy, “Why Is Hamas Finally Talking About Giving Up Power?” Oct 4 2025.
When Hamas abruptly announced that it was willing to talk about leaving power in Gaza, two stories appeared almost simultaneously. In The New York Times, readers got a photo spread: Kushner and Steve Witkoff on a tarmac beside private jets, Trump reading a note from his Secretary of State (”Jared is a very smart guy,” Mr. Trump said), Kushner at a White House press conference. The piece called it a “Gaza breakthrough,” another triumph of Trump-era deal-making.
Five days earlier, I had published a different account. Mine argued that Hamas’s shift wasn’t born of diplomatic genius but of collapse — its fighters destroyed, its finances gutted, its patrons and hosts turning away, its leaders saving their own skin and the money they’ve skimmed over two decades. The difference between the two stories isn’t just perspective. It’s method: one written from inside the room, the other from outside the illusion.
Today: The Machinery in Motion
By the time you read this, Israel’s cabinet has voted to approve the deal. The headlines declare victory. Kushner and Witkoff will fly to Israel this week for photo opportunities. Trump plans a signing ceremony in Egypt—though the actual terms were negotiated by people whose names you’ll never read.
This is the gap between announcement and reality. Access journalism lives in the former; analysis lives in the latter. One tells you a deal was made. The other tells the story behind the deal.
But there’s another layer the access coverage won’t touch: the negotiations themselves are partly theater. Hamas’s external leadership — sitting in Doha and Istanbul, negotiating immunity deals and asset protection for wealth they’ve stolen over two decades — needs the fighters still in Gaza to believe this is a legitimate political settlement, not a sellout. Those fighters fear Israeli and local militia reprisals. They can’t realize they’re being abandoned by leaders in luxury exile who are primarily securing their own escape routes. The diplomatic pageantry serves that deception as much as it serves the headlines.
The Access Desk
The Times article is a perfect specimen of what modern journalism has become: the access desk. In this model, reporting is less about discovering what happened than about documenting what powerful people say happened — preferably over lunch. Access confers prestige, prestige brings readers, and readers bring advertising.
Every sentence in the Kushner piece is a small act of proximity. The reporters describe the décor, the car ride, the phone calls, the insider mood. The effect is intimacy: you are there, next to the power brokers.
Access journalism doesn’t lie; it flatters. It portrays power as competence because that’s what power allows you to see. The result is narrative realism without analytical truth. Diplomacy becomes a lifestyle story: a few confident men close a deal, history bends, applause follows.
It’s not corruption; it’s choreography.
The Analyst’s View
Real reporting — or, in my case, analytic writing — starts from the opposite impulse. You don’t ask what the powerful claim; you ask what the conditions allow. Hamas didn’t wake up enlightened by Kushner’s charisma. It woke up broke, surrounded, and abandoned.
The evidence is structural:
Gaza’s military network in ruins.
Host governments like Qatar and Turkey running out of patience.
Iran’s regional proxy system collapsing under sanctions and overreach.
Leaders desperate to protect funds absconded from aid meant for the Gazan people.
These are not “sources.” They are facts in the public record, visible to anyone not distracted by the show at the mansion. When the external leadership of Hamas began hinting at a deal, it wasn’t because an American envoy found the magic formula. It was because every other option had disappeared.
That’s not a glamorous story. It has no protagonist. It won’t trend on social media. But it explains reality, which is supposed to be the point.
Math is boring
Independent of access journalism’s structural problems, there’s a simpler truth: people prefer entertaining stories over in-depth analysis. Articles like the NYT’s Kushner piece succeed partly because readers naturally gravitate toward personality-driven narrative. That’s not manipulation—that’s human nature.
Dramatized narrative is genuinely more entertaining than structural analysis.
The movie Amadeus is more compelling than Mozart’s actual biography. A real day in the life of Mozart would likely be very boring unless you’re a composer interested in his workflow.
Personality-driven stories about deal-makers in Miami mansions will always draw more readers than forensic accounts of collapsing proxy networks and asset protection schemes.
But Amadeus is a movie. Movies are entertainment. News organizations are supposed to inform, not distort events because people like this other version better.
The Cost of Proximity
The deeper problem is not bias but dependence. When a newspaper’s authority rests on its ability to quote the powerful, it becomes invested in the continued credibility of those same figures. To lose access is to lose product. The result is self-censorship by tone: the sharp question replaced by a polite paraphrase.
For individual journalists, the stakes are personal. Writing critical analysis that angers officials means losing your seat in the room, your spot on Air Force One, your invitation to background briefings. The career rewards go to those who maintain relationships with power, not those who interrogate it.
For news organizations, the calculation is similar. A paper that doesn’t play the access game won’t get exclusive interviews or the leaks that drive front-page stories. Those go to outlets that maintain cordial relationships with officials. So the system perpetuates itself—one careful story at a time, one protected relationship at a time.
Over time, the most respected publications sound more like public-relations firms for whoever occupies the front row of history.
After the Noise
The Gaza moment will fade. Hamas will still be broken, reconstruction will still be political, and the people living there will still be trapped between forces they didn’t choose. None of that will depend on whether Jared Kushner made a good phone call in Miami.
Access journalism will move on to the next mansion, the next inside scoop. The analysts will still be picking through the rubble, asking why the pattern repeats.
The first keeps its seat at the table; the second reminds us who’s paying for dinner.