Posted on 07/28/2010 4:52:29 AM PDT by SJackson
The New York Times has hired a new public editor, Arthur Brisbane, to be an “advocate” for readers and to uphold “the highest standards in journalism.” Let’s hope he means it because a backlog of complaints about the publication’s coverage of Israel and the Middle East awaits him.
Among unresolved matters is one evidently too hot for editors to handle.
It concerns Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner’s statements on MSNBC revealing a strikingly jaundiced view of Israelis generally. He claimed in a March 8 broadcast that unfavorable views of Barack Obama on the part of the Israeli electorate reflected not just dismay over the policies of the president, but also collective public “prejudice” and “racism.”
The incendiary charge is belied empirically by poll data showing Israelis had actually favored Obama over John McCain in the 2008 election, and until the late spring of 2009 continued to approve quite enthusiastically of the young American president, with 60 percent expressing favorable opinion toward him. Attitudes shifted when his policies roused concerns – not, obviously, because Israelis suddenly noticed his race. Yet Times editors have stonewalled in setting the record straight. (According to the Times’ own standards, its writers are not to make statements in other media outlets that couldn’t also appropriately appear in the paper.) Equally notable in this matter is Bronner’s double standard. While dubbing Israelis racists, he has avoided applying the term to bigoted Arab attacks against the Jewish state. A Nexis search finds not a single case in which he directly labeled Palestinians or Arabs racists – notwithstanding the many documented examples of anti-Semitic media, political and religious statements from Arab sources.
IN A sea of similar cases, a February 28 screed by Hamas’s deputy minister of religious endowments aired on Al-Aksa TV just days before Bronner labeled Israelis racists. The Muslim cleric declared: [The Jews] want to present themselves to the world as if they have rights, but, in fact, they are foreign bacteria – a microbe unparalleled in the world.
It’s not me who says this. The Koran itself says that they have no parallel: “You shall find the strongest men in enmity to the believers to be the Jews.” May He annihilate this filthy people who have neither religion nor conscience.I condemn whoever believes in normalizing relations with them, whoever supports sitting down with them, and whoever believes that they are human beings. They are not human beings. They are not people. They have no religion, no conscience, and no moral values."(Translation by Middle East Media Research Institute.)
The question is: Can a reporter who falsely imputes bigoted sentiment to the Israeli population, while ignoring ferocious prejudice on the part of the Arabs, be trusted on any subject related to the Jewish state? There are other questions for the public editor, including those about the Times’ heavy reliance on radical NGOs for quotes and story ideas focused on biased criticism of Israel, and the paper’s portrayal of these sources as objective and credible.
Thus, reporters frequently cite – to name but a few – Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem and Gisha.
As Haaretz’s military correspondent observed regarding Breaking the Silence, “Any organization whose Web site includes the claim by members to expose the ‘corruption which permeates the military system’ is not a neutral observer.”
Indicative of the disregard for fairness and objectivity, Israeli soldier “testimonies” posted on its Web site alleging various infractions are anonymous and include no dates or specifics, making investigation – and refutation – impossible.
B’Tselem, created to “change Israeli policy in the occupied territories” and to monitor treatment of Palestinians there, has categorized terrorists such as Abdul Salaam Sadek Hassouneh, who murdered six at a bat mitzva celebration in 2002, as “civilians” killed by Israel.
Similar distortions minimizing violence against Israelis color much of B’Tselem’s work.
Gisha pursues legal measures against Israel, charging “segregation,” and signs ads alleging it is an apartheid regime. Its reports minimize or ignore entirely the threats against Israel. Yet the Times invokes these groups’ claims as worthy and valid.
The same whitewashing of extremist sources occurs in other ways readers will likely never notice.
A story on May 7 by Bronner deceptively cited “Nancy Kricorian, a New York City novelist and poet who visited here for the first time as part of the Palestinian [writers’] festival.”
The “novelist and poet,” who was quoted as “infuriated” at “military checkpoints and the separation barrier,” was presented as an apolitical literary soul newly encountering Middle East realities.
Actually, Kricorian is the New York coordinator of the far-left Code Pink organization and promotes stridently anti-Israel political positions, including the organization’s “Stolen Beauty” boycott campaign against the Ahava company, creator and marketer of Dead Sea beauty products.
Brisbane will do the public and the paper a service to address squarely the increasingly tainted Times coverage, including urging an apology by Bronner for his smearing of Israelis, requiring candid identification of radical (and factually questionable) sources being cited and encouraging prominent coverage of the virulent anti-Jewish rhetoric of Israel’s neighbors that undermines hopes for peace.
NYT still can’t get their Stalin reports correct.
The actual frontpage of The New York Times of November 11, 1938
did not mention that the German Nazi government actually initiated the NewYorkTimes-supported attacks.
Instead, the New York Times lied and protected the Nazis, falsely claiming that Goebbels called to stop it.
> Questions for ‘The New York Times’—Can their reports on Israel be trusted?
No.
In fact, their reports on anything cannot be trusted.
The NYT is populated by urban liberals, maoists, GLBT zealots, and moslems.
All of the above slant the news in whatever way best suits their hobby horse issues.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
..................
unfavorable views of Barack Obama on the part of the Israeli electorate reflected not just dismay over the policies of the president, but also collective public “prejudice” and “racism.”
Like the teapartiers. Still, BHO was white when he was elected, so the Times is probably right.
Pinch Sulzberger is 59 years old. He was a Poli sci major from a NE university. He is about as leftwing as they come.
To put the words New York Times in the same sentence as the phrase “highest standards of journalism” is either an attempt to be funny, or an insulting attempt to insult the intelligence of the reader.
I’m taking it as the “joke du jour”.
Again, this is just more of the usual leftist hubris... Since there could never be anything wrong with the policies, it's just that the people must be prejudiced and racist.
Mark
Not true... We can trust the NY Slimes to publish anything that will damage US national security, and if it gets our people in the military killed, so much the better (as far as the slimes is concerned.)
Mark
> We can trust the NY Slimes to publish anything that will
> damage US national security, and if it gets our people in
> the military killed, so much the better (as far as the
> slimes is concerned.)
Point well taken. I stand corrected.
Though a large proportion of their anti-military hit pieces are fabrications.
Everyone knows that the NYT is simply a Leftist activist paper. Governments such as Israel should consider NYT, WP et al as menacing to their interests as Al Jazeera.
Israel should conduct a campaign of dis-information against the NYT and their ilk. Perhaps Israel could send out “fake” wiki-leaks that further undermine the Leftist media credibility while confusing the Islamo-fascists.
No the Marxist/Socialist agenda requires all Free nations to be destroyed.
The New York Times is the mouth piece of the Maxist/Socialist movement and everything they write is a lie.
Whether or not Goebbels himself called a halt to it is not all that important. Someone high up in the Nazi regime had to signal a stop to it at some point, not because of any mercy toward the Jewish victims, but because some sense of order had to be restored to get back to "business as usual" in so far as the Nazis were concerned.
But for the Slimes reporters to characterize the mayhem as "revenge for the murder of a German diplomat in Paris by a young Polish Jew" is spewing Nazi propaganda and misleading the reader into thinking that there was "an-eye-for-an-eye" kind of justification.
The pro-Israel community shouldn't lose sleep over it, but be encouraged that the Times is in the process of self-destructing, as its corporate financial picture readily indicates. There will come a point, sooner or later, where the Times either shuts its doors or sells to a new ownership with a more objective point of view on Israel and the Middle East, as well as a slew of other issues.
That's pure bunk!!! There was no such poll data (unless it's a poll of Arabs in Israel).
This is one of those trick questions I’d guess. Thanks SJackson.
Answer: (Select one of the following)
1) No.
2) Hell No.
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