The arguments by Keller, Goldberg, Avishai, etc. in defense of retaining Ethan Bronner at his post in spite of the conspicuous conflict of interest, show how hard it is for us to judge Israel by the standard we apply to other countries.The sympathy/kinship/affinity runs too deep. Imagine a Times reporter on the Zapatista rebellion of the 1990s whose son enlisted in the Mexican army that fought to crush the rebellion. Would Keller write a personal defense of the decision to keep that reporter as his leading source of information on Mexico?
Closer to home. Say the Times reporter in Helmand province is married to an Afghan woman (from one of the families of the Northern Alliance). Their son enlists in a special-ops unit operating in Helmand and the Times asks itself: "How compromising is this? The marriage was already awkward, but it also gave our reporter access to sources denied to other Americans. Yet the son will now be going on controversial missions which the father is assigned to cover." Is there really much question what conclusion would be reached?
The defense of Ethan Bronner’s personal probity and freedom from bias finally proves too much. If these arguments suffice to overturn the usual standard of conflict-of-interest, it should be possible for Bronner himself to enlist in the IDF and continue as the leading Times correspondent on Israel’s politics and its treatment of Palestine.
Dear Anonymous;
This is going a bit too far.
Quote: it should be possible for Bronner himself to enlist in the IDF and continue as the leading Times correspondent on Israel’s politics and its treatment of Palestine.
He’s not the ‘leading correspondent’ on Israel, but the goddam Bureau Chief. He takes all the little snippets from his juniors, and from his contacts at the IDF and the Israeli Ministry of Whatever, and cuts-and-pastes them together.
He’s not ony biased; he’s lazy (how else can he take a month out to do a lecture tour?)
Bronner should call you up and ask when he can take vacation or go on lecture tours. Advising Bronner would only take you away for a few minutes from the countless hours you spend on the important work you do for this blog.
“When you have nothing to say, drop a turd.”
Julian’s Rules of Blogging
Odd, I find RP’s comments very often informative. In contrast, Julian, your comments are very rarely not simply juvenile name-calling.
Julian, you really are a complete asshole. I don’t spend ‘countless hours’ writing here, although I do spend some time checking facts to ensure they are correct, and so they are.
You, on the other hand, spend 5 minutes writing a personal attack. Good stuff.
I have to agree with you RP. If the bureau is more than one person, the bureau chief has the luxury of taking on a supervisory role and as you said, stitching up pieces as and when he/she feels like it.
Heck, even when they are single-reporter bureaus, correspondents don’t file every day, more like once a week, if something in the local paper or TV reports catches their eye. It’s only if there is a developing story that they file daily, and often they may file from wherever they are located, a Moscow correspondent filing reports about something in Chechnya, and all cribbed off the TV. It’s all a big sham.
It’s a bigger sham than you think. When I was serving as foreign press coordinator for Dr. Barghouthi when he ran for president in 2005, I had to know the addresses of all the foreign press offices in Israel/Palestine. Or should I say Israel. Virtually all were headquartered in Tel Aviv, and most of the journalists rarely ventured into the Palestinian areas except on ‘field trips’ sponsored by the Israeli government, where they would tour guide them around Palestinian areas in bulletproof buses.
A journalist friend told me that a lot of journalists who filed Gaza datelines actually filed from a special Israeli army zone in the northern Gaza Strip, which sheltered them from having to meet any actual Gazans. Ben Wedeman of CNN is one of the very few American mainstream journos who actually took the trouble to meet and depict Palestinians as human beings. Bob Simon of CBS also dares to show Israeli settlers for what they are. But that’s really about it.
The state of journalism today is quite embarrassing.
link to
ahmed, Christiane Amanpur did the same from Bosnia. I forgot who outed her, but she was 500 klics away from the action she was claiming to cover.
The editors appreciate Bronner’s work, his attempts to present content as completely as he is able.
Its a statement of respect, and a first amendment fighting back from what they fear may be orchestrated mob populist censorship (in the name of opposing censorship).
Richard: The Times has rules against the political involvement of their reporters, which include the reporters’ families. The Times is breaking its own rules. Do you believe that organizations should violate their own rules?
When the organization in question is a propaganda machine, ‘their rules’ carry as much weight as the rest of their spin.
I posted this on another thread, which you obviously didn’t read. Newspapers aren’t run on romantic notions of mounting glorious fights or editorials against “orchestrated mob populist censorship.” They have ethics rules. Some of the NYT’s ethics rules that apply are below.
link to nytco.com
Richard,
do you not see there is a case to be made for biased views of the bureau chief?
I’m surprised that you do not see a conflict here.
why do so many here waste time with Witty?
Even on posts where he does not put up a comment we can almost see it as if it is there, and surely we know pretty much what he’ll say anyway
… you know, kind of like Bronner – we know what will be said beforehand
I wish more people would just ignore him. It would be great if this site supported killfiles.
Ignore him or not, RW is the political mainstream in this country,at least as far as Congress,the White House and much or most of the media coverage is concerned. He’s well to the left of most of Congress.
Makes me unhappy,but it’s true.
If you actually got to know me, it might make you happy, rather than unhappy.
The ugliness of the issue is in the lynch mob approach to Bronner the individual. He might find that he has to seek a new role in the world, but the unkindness of the commentary creates the world we live in.
“If you actually got to know me, it might make you happy, rather than unhappy.”
That’s funny, Richard. You’re probably a nice person in real life, when your idolatrous feelings towards Israel aren’t at stake. I know your opinions on that subject very well. What makes me unhappy is that such a one-sided position (where Palestinians are held to much stiffer moral standards than Israel) is the norm among politicians in the US.
Richard, let’s meet for drinks in NYC to discuss politics. Name the time and place and we’ll meet you there.
On the lynch mob, I have little sympathy for Bronner–he’s part of a mainstream press that’s marginalized sympathy for Palestinians for a very long time. Here he is in a book review praising Dershowitz’s “The Case for Israel”–
link
There are a lot of big things wrong with that review (and it demonstrates Bronner’s bias quite nicely), but one small point is his flatly dishonest depiction of Chomsky as someone who blames America and Israel as the source of all the evil in the world. It’s the sort of lie someone in the mainstream press used to be able to tell about dissenters, knowing full well that people who objected would only be able to respond by writing letters to the editor, hoping that the book review might conceivably publish it. With the internet, things have changed and the Bronners of the world suddenly find that all the marginal people are able to talk back without having to hope the NYT will be charitable enough to publish what they have to say.
I wish Bronner were feeling pressure simply for the bias on display in his coverage–it’s regrettable to me that it takes some personal gossipy type story about his son joining in the IDF to get Hoyt to pay any attention at all and then Hoyt endorses Bronner’s coverage, but says he should resign because of the appearance of a conflict. I think that’s silly–if I thought Bronner’s coverage was fair I wouldn’t care what his son did.
Donald is, as usual, right — this time about Bronner/Chomsky. And I still don’t see Richard explaining why the New York Times can break its own rules in Bronner’s case.
Corporate rules are entirely internal. Our commentary is vanity.
Again, I’ve found Bronner’s reports to contain information that suggested to me to question the status quo, so I don’t find him to be the apologist that you rant about.
The lynch mob affect still pervades. Again, instead of making the better argument, and going door to door and community to community to convey it honestly.
Bronner might be more critical of Israel’s actions than you, Richard. I’m not just snarking either. One thing I value in Bronner’s reporting is that he’s often admitted that the Gaza blockade is there in part to set up a contrast between the misery of Gazans under Hamas and the relative prosperity of people in the West Bank. I say “admitted”, but it’s possible Bronner writes this because he doesn’t see it as an admission–he may not see anything morally dubious about the policy. It might be like Tom Friedman’s column during the Gaza War, where he took for granted that the Gaza War was meant to punish civilians, probably not seeing anything wrong with that since it’s the way Friedman thinks himself.
RW: “Corporate rules are entirely internal. ”
A nanosecond’s thought will show you, Richard, why this statement is false. The Times’ rules, cited above by MRW, are meant to maintain the credibility of their reporters in the outside world by preventing conflicts of interest, whether their own or in their immediate families.
RW: “Our commentary is vanity.”
Again, wrong. Commentary here, and elsewhere, raised the issue and prompted the Times’ ombudsman to say the paper was violating its own rules.
Witty: Corporate rules are entirely internal.
Again, another profoundly stupid utterance. An employee, fired by a corporation for violating corporate rules, can petition a US civil court for redress if he or she feels there was no violation of corporate rules. The Southern District Court of New York is full of such cases because these involve federal law.
Corporate rules are anything but internal.