Earlier today Phil posted on a LA Times article by Tina Daunt about the protest against the Toronto International Film Festival’s City to City program with Tel Aviv that somehow manages to avoid quoting any protesters. However, Daunt does quote Haim Saban for some reason:
Media mogul Haim Saban was blunt in his assessment. "The world always had anti-Semites," he said in an e-mail exchange. "It has now and always will, but the people of Israel always have, and always will live and prosper. Sorry Jew haters. You lose."
The article repeats much of misreporting about the protest (no, it wasn’t a blacklist, or a boycott), and the Toronto Declaration organizers are not taking it lying down. Here is an email from Naomi Klein to the author looking for clarification:
from: Naomi Klein
to: tina.daunt@latimes.com
date: Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 9:11 AMDear Ms. Daunt,
Why didn’t you see fit to ask any of the authors of the Toronto Declaration for comment in your Sept 19 piece? Our email address is on our site, we are not hard to reach, yet no one heard from you. You clearly conducted many interviews on the other side. Isn’t it standard journalistic practice to ask for a response, especially when throwing around slanders like "Jew haters?" Many of the claims made about our protest in your article are simply false: we did not call for a boycott, as your subhead claims, I personally attended the festival as did most of the co-authors of the declaration. We are not "blacklisting" Israeli filmmakers, our letter clearly states Israeli filmmakers are welcome at TIFF and eleven Israeli filmmakers signed our declaration. We did not politicize the film festival, the festival did by deciding to honor Tel Aviv with a special spotlight in a year that began with the assault on Gaza, acts which the UN has now described as "war crimes." That’s why the decision lead to protests in Ramallah and Cairo, not just in Toronto.
Without giving us the chance to address the extremely contentious and damaging claims made by several people quoted in your piece, your readers cannot possibly have the information they need to make up their own minds. Can you please explain why we were not contacted? I believe standard journalist practices apply even to those of us who don’t live in LA.
Thanks
Naomi Klein
Ms. Daunt has not yet replied.
Update (9/22/09): Tina Daunt has responded to Naomi Klein’s email. Hopefully the Times will invite a a response from the Toronto Declaration organizers, or at least run a follow up correcting the original piece.
