‘LA Times’ Should Release Transcript of Obama/Khalidi Event

by on October 29, 2008 6

Move over Christian fundamentalists. The real religious battle in this year's campaign is finally breaking the surface. The LA Times has a video of a going away party for Palestinian New Historian Rashid Khalidi in Chicago in 2003 where Barack Obama apparently spoke. It won't release the video, despite a lot of pressure from rightwing bloggers, because it says it got the video from a confidential source and can't burn the source. (Brad Greenberg takes the LAT's side.) The Times says, Hey we reported on the party last April. This is as we say in the French news business, bullsheet. The LA Times should do more. Can't it post an edited version of the video that does not compromise its source? It should post a typescript of Obama's statement at the party, and all the Palestinians' statements about the "Zionist settlers of the West Bank," and other true facts.  As it is, the Times is holding out important information. This is very important: Palestinians are important, Obama's freer thoughts re Israel/Palestine are important, the debate is extremely important. The Palestinians Obama hung out with are important. And Rashid Khalidi's important. And his wife Mona, whom Obama praised, is a great woman. Let's have it out, dude, and let all the American Jews who are for apartheid stand up and be counted. P.S. Khalidi disagrees with Walt and Mearsheimer on some stuff; why isn't this getting debated on "60 Minutes"?

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Israel/Palestine, Neocons, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics

{ 6 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. sword of gideon says:
    October 29, 2008 at 10:43 am

    Just saw a pig fly by my window. And I believe that there are now snowballs in hell. I agree with this one.

  2. otto says:
    October 29, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    I agree too. The transcript and the tape, both.

  3. D. says:
    October 29, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    It'll never happen. There's a reason billionaire Sam Zell — a man who had never in his life shown any interest in journalism — bought the money-losing L.A. Times last spring.

  4. D. says:
    October 29, 2008 at 2:19 pm

    Actually I take that back. Journalism has sometimes been called "storytelling," and Zell has indeed demonstrated an interest in storytelling: As a child he worked as a coulselor at Jewish summer camp, where he would "regularly transfix his campers with tales of his family’s escape from Nazi-occupied Poland."

  5. anon says:
    October 29, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    I see the LA Times has been tracking the AIPAC spy case rigorously–you see that great article they had on October 28th last when the case was back in court? Good to see there's something left of our Fourth Estate.

  6. Richard Witty says:
    October 30, 2008 at 6:27 am

    You want the LA Times to consider their word to their source inconsequential?

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