On May 11, as the Eurovision Song Contest was opening its 2026 edition in Vienna, The New York Times published two major pieces about Israel in a single day. The first, a page A1 investigation headlined “In Eurovision, Israel Used Soft Power to Burnish Its Ailing Image,” alleged that the Israeli government had spent over $1 million coordinating a campaign to influence Eurovision voting. It was a finding the paper’s own reporting ultimately undermined, however as the piece acknowledged no rules had been broken, no bots deployed, no votes manipulated. The online headline was, “How Israel ‘Co-opted’ Eurovision — and Nearly Broke the World’s Biggest Song Contest.” That was quietly changed to “How Israel Turned Eurovision’s Stage Into a Soft Power Tool.” The second piece, an opinion column by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, was harder to dismiss as a slow news day.…