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?
I dont get the last point either. What a mistake that the NYT didn't publish and stress the 2002 boycott as an effort to mold and change the reporting. Why didn't it use sunshine and object, scream? Instead, now look where it is. It's caved. And the caving continues. And a bunch of right-wing Likudists are firm in their belief and arrogance that they can cause financial harm to get what they want whenever they want. It no doubt affected the Times' Iraq coverage. It affected the coverage of Netanyahu meeting Obama. But Jews aren't the only people who buy the paper. That wider population is who the Times needs to survive, and whom they lost a lot of by lowering their standards. By caving. The Times is now on a ventilator. It lost $74.5 million in the first quarter of this year vs $335,000 in the same quarter last year. It is no longer the paper of record. It's just a New York paper with an AIPAC slant, and great Sunday features. But tell the truth? No. Can't be counted on to do that anymore. The Rabbis can gang up on the NYT again, but they will kill the one paper that will bow to them. I’d love to see them try as the I-P negotiations heat up. It will just put another nail in the coffin. Maureen Dowd’s faux pas tainted the columnists. I get more ME news here at this site than I ever get from the NYT. I get better Latin American news from Narco News than the NYT. I get the trends/headlines from HuffPo and can then double- and triple-source to find the real story, since HuffPo is in the tank. And I read tons of foreign press. Who needs to plays charades with a Grey Lady? Waste of my time. Let the Rabbis diddle her.
Stanislawski points out that coverage of the Russian Empire was distorted. I see some similarity with Sudan coverage and suggest that the distortion probably applies to a longer period than Stanislawski discusses: Initial Comments: Saviors and Survivors.
MRW, spot-on anaylsis. I cancelled my subscription to the Tepid Times about three years ago and haven't looked back since. Pinch Sulzberger squandered his family's legacy, The arrogance of being the "newspaper of record" caused the NYT to have an arrogant, superior tone with unbearably leftist agendas. The problem for the NYT is that there is an echo chamber in the Internet, and a million bloggers out there who can call the Times on its intellectually dishonest approach to covering current events, just as Mondoweiss calls out Bronner on his slanted front-page I/P stories. Now Mondoweiss is the primary authority on I/P developments, analysis and coverage — the Times is not even worthy of cleaning my coffee spills anymore.
"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." And if you don't like the leavening, you get the threatening!