Bruce Wolman responds to the controversy over Jews in the media at this site:
Some background. I did not write my comment as a posting, but as an e-mail to Phil. Usually, when I write something for publication in Mondoweiss I use a different process. The reason I didn’t write a posting was due to my consideration that the subject is complicated, requiring more explication and research than I was prepared to carry out at the moment. Even though I wasn’t ready to present a full view, it does not mean I’m not justified writing in that Blankfort’s facts are wrong. Since my comment now has a wider audience, let me explain further.
My remarks were about "Jewish ownership of the media," which was the subject of Blankfort’s comment. Nowhere did I suggest that "Jews aren’t a dominant player in media life," as Phil responded. If anything, I suggested the opposite. I wrote, "There is certainly a story about Jewish influence in the media, a nuanced one that should be discussed more, but not the anti-Semitic claptrap that Blankfort is passing on" and "the story of influence in the media is complicated and I thought Mondoweiss had been doing a good job of documenting how it actually works."
I do disagree with Phil on the importance of Jewish media ownership. If as an aside I tried to infer a thesis in my comment, it was that the American media would be just as pro-Israeli or pro-Zionist had no Jews owned any of it. My evidence: editorial views and reporting on Israel do not line up according to whether the media is Jewish or non-Jewish owned. In many cases, non-Jewish owned media are more pro-Zionist than the Jewish owned ones. (In this discussion, I am confining myself to pro-Israel and pro-Zionist biases. Before taking up the subject of pro-Jewish biases in the media, I would like to know what we are talking about.) I raised the example of the Los Angeles Times under the Chandler family as an example. The LAT became pro-Israel long before it had Jewish owners.
Rupert Murdoch is the most influential media baron in the world by far. Fox News is the preferred outlet of the Israeli government and public. No Jew can compare with Ruppert in providing global platforms for pro-Israeli and neo-Conservative politics. This phenomena is not explained by making Murdoch into an honorary Jew.
Phil’s not convinced about the Grahams of the Washington Post and a few of the commenters also responded negatively to my reportage, or lack of about, them. The only reason, I wrote "as far as I know" was that in a half-hour of research I couldn’t determine whether any of the Graham great grandchildren converted to Judaism. Fortunately there is no National Jewish Registry to which one can quickly refer. Katharine did not consider herself Jewish, her husband Phil who ran the Post for many years turned into an anti-Semite in his last crazy years before he killed himself. Katharine’s and Phil’s son Donald, who ran the Post for the family the last 30 years and still serves as Chairman has never considered himself Jewish, and the current Graham heir who now serves as Publisher, considers herself Anglican/Episcopalian and doesn’t even qualify as Jewish under the Nuremberg Laws or Israel’s Right of Return.
Until today – naive me – I thought only anti-Semites considered the Washington Post Jewish-owned. I checked with my mother whose been in Washington for 60 years and asked if any Washington Jews considered the Grahams Jewish, and she just laughed at me as if I was crazy.
Some commenters wrote about Jewish managers as opposed to owners, especially in Hollywood, and to an extent I concur about this nexus of influence. I worked briefly in Hollywood, so I understand that business culture fairly well. But like Phil I would argue that non-Jewish managers do not by-and-large enforce biases different from their Jewish colleagues and rivals. Phil attributes this to the influence of Establishment Jews on media culture. I would roughly agree that is certainly part of it, but nothing I wrote earlier contradicts Phil’s response.
Phil also reiterates some of his own experiences, none of which I question. I might take issue over the influence of the New Republic on the overall media landscape, but I was fully aware what restrictions I might be placing on my own future media opportunities once I contributed some articles to Mondoweiss.
My reaction to Blankfort’s remarks is due to the fact that there are real anti-Semitic web sites out there which accuse the Jews of owning the media and the banks, and for them that explains just about everything. If you are going to support the historically charged thesis, Jews = the media or Jews = the banks, then you should minimally have your facts straight.
