In the Columbia Journalism Review, JJ Goldberg has a thorough piece on coverage of the Israeli soldiers' atrocities during Gaza (a story broken by Haaretz) and suggests that reader pressure may have played a role in New York Times reporter Ethan Bronner's decision to somewhat soften his own account of the matter to make the harsh new "go down gently":
The most common form of pro-Israel pressure is reader mail accusing
writers, often in vitriolic, personal terms, of maligning Israel.
Advocacy organizations sometimes weigh in, publishing specific media
critiques that are circulated to sympathizers, generating more public
protest.
Less common but more dramatic are boycotts of particular news organizations. The New York Times
was targeted in 2002 for a ten-day subscription boycott, called by a
rabbi who objected to the paper’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian
fighting that was raging at the time. The paper didn’t divulge the
losses, but they were “enough to notice,” former New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Sr. told me at the time. The following spring, coordinated boycotts were launched against the Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Chicago Tribune,
with thousands of subscribers participating. At the same time,
pro-Israel hardliners launched a donors’ boycott of Boston’s public
radio station, WBUR, to protest National Public Radio’s Middle East
coverage. It cost the station more than $1 million in pledged gifts,
according to news reports.
Even if the news organizations don’t crack down on their
journalists, the outside pressure can lead, often unconsciously, to
self-censorship. “If you’re an up-and-coming journalist, there is no
reason whatsoever why you would want to get the pro-Israel community
mad at you—absolutely none,” said M. J. Rosenberg, policy director of
the liberal-leaning Israel Policy Forum. “The pro-Israel community is
strategically located and is associated with powerful people.”
It’s almost a cliché these days to suggest that the presence of a
well-organized Jewish community in America has a lot to do with the way
Israel is treated by government and the media. It’s a mistake, though,
to note the community’s ability to threaten and overlook its role as a
leavening force in the larger culture. Jewish sensibilities help shape
America’s sense of humor, U.S. attitudes toward civil rights, and much
more.
I don't get that last point. Are they really related? We gave America civil rights, so we get to destroy them in Palestine?
