I’m on record saying that Ethan Bronner’s son serving in the IDF is going to affect his assignment at The New York Times. The Times doesn’t like its reporters making news, and Bronner’s making it. From Anshel Pfeffer at Haaretz, who advises Bronner how to spin the deal:
I’ve been thinking about this a great deal since discovering the mini blog storm brewing in recent days regarding the New York Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner. Apparently his son has joined the Israel Defense Forces and some pro-Palestinian bloggers believe this is [etc]…
While I of course respect Bronner’s desire to shield his family from undue scrutiny, I wish his or his paper’s response could have been something more along these lines: "Bronner Junior has indeed recently joined the IDF and we believe that Bronner Senior can only benefit as a journalist from his son’s experience."For better or worse, the IDF is a major player in this region. I’d certainly hope that Private Bronner’s stories at the Shabbat dinner table (if such a thing exists in Chez Bronner) would enrich his father’s reports, as I am sure they will a few months down the road if the by-then corporal gets sent with his unit to the West Bank.
How much better to learn of the injustices of the occupation up front, rather than have a source on the frontline.
Pfeffer’s pretending Bronner has no potential conflict of interest in all this is disingenuous, as is the idea that there’s no problem whatsoever with so many Jews covering the ME on behalf of the western MSM (simply because they’re the best, of course).
What really bugs me however (this is an old peeve of mine), is his attempt to bolster his own (and Bronner’s) credibility, by hiding behind the median. Yes, yes, extremist bloggers on both sides, they’re all the same, thank God for sane journalists who know how to stay objective in the dead centre.
By the way, a good journalist would benefit from knowing and talking to an Israeli Army recruit, not from having him at his table and staying up at night worrying about him.
Great comments on this thread, Shmuel.
I’m sure Palestinians will appreciate an American speaking Israeli soldier kicking them out of their home or dragging their sons and daughters out of their beds in the wee hours of the morning.
At least it’s no longer colonialism by proxy. “We have brought American imperialism to your door step”.
Your success will be to discredit a man of integrity, a slap at the New York Times.
How satisfying.
Richard: How do you know Bronner is a man of integrity? Where is your customary skepticism, your need for proof?
Witty reflexively supports other Zionists, no matter what their character/credentials/etc..
You don’t get sincere arguments from people like Witty. You get partisan, ideological hackery.
The NYT is an Establishment rag.
link to belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu
A man of integrity Witty? Bronner is the man behind the widely held belief that Araft walked away from the golden offer at Camp David.
You obviously regard lying on behalf of Israel as a sign of integrity. You’re nothing more than a Dershowitz Mini me.
I don’t know what’s wrong with a slap at the New York Times. God knows, it deserves it. And yes it would be satisfying, given their one-sided view of everything–not just Israel-Palestine..
Phil is right to hammer away on this issue, but we have to remember that the son-in-the-IDF is only the last straw showing potential for bias and conflict for interest. The most important reasons for pulling Bronner from this beat (in order) are:
1) Demonstrated bias in his very own writings.
2) His nationality and the fact that he has very personal interests in this conflict, from his family to the very neighbourhood he lives in.
3) The fact that his friendly contacts are so overwhelmingly Israelis or tied to Israel, and so few are Palestinian/Arab.
Having a son in the IDF is the most blunt and direct evidence of conflict of interest — hence Phil being right to hammer away on this issue — but we also must try to ensure that the Times does not simply replace Bronner with someone who exhibits 1 to 3 above but has no offspring in the IDF.
It’s sad to be labeled “pro-palestinian” when one merely wants balance. I think that this label goes to anyone who is not gung ho over Israel. I prefer pro human rights. History cannot be erased no matter how many injustices have gone past, but a correction is in order. The Palestinians are genetic brothers to some Jews, it is only cruel and ugly to continue the current mode.
Pfeffer claims it would A-ok if the Times’ Taghreed El-Khodary had a son in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. Of course, this ignores the fact that the Times would never hire someone in that position in the first place.
When will Osama bin Laden’s son, who currently lives in Egypt, be appointed to the US President’s Chief of Staff position?
Rahm Emanuel seems to have so much in common with that man, he could very well be his replacement in 2012, no?
“79,800 for bronner son idf,” on the Google meter. It needs to get above 100,00 to get past the mini-storm stage. Looks like Bronner’s reporting goes back before 1991, seems like he has a long and prosperous employment. Not like others tossed from their positions because they did not tow the line.
Or those who would never get the opportunity, because they are not of the “right cloth.”
The NYT traditionally never hired locals as foreign correspondents or as heads of foreign desks. Never. Look at the great David Binder who covered Yugoslavia for over 30 years, or Chris Hedges.
I certainly don’t think that, as Jews, they should be more sympathetic toward the Jewish state.
oh no, never! no one would dare call you a traitor if your were not.
To understand the real problem here, imagine what would happen if Richard Goldstone’s son were to join the IDF.
It is not simply a question of bias. As others have pointed out, Bronner would be biased if he had a son or not. The more important issue is pressure: with a son under the control of the IDF, Israel would have a handle on Bronner, a lever for extortion or punishment.
you are right. this is only a lever to move him out of the Times or at least get some balanced reporting. it only indicates that business as usual might not cut it anymore.
So let me see if I get Pfeffer’s logic straight. If I want to report on my country’s politics, what I must do is… hmmm… ask my President! After all, who knows better than her the country’s myriad problems? If she bribed some Senator into voting a law or some such, she’ll surely tell me; after all, presidents –or IDF soldiers, for that matter– don’t lie.
Back to planet Earth, it’s interesting to recall this Breaking the Silence interview. Soldier speaks first:
Two soldiers in the back escorting the guy, and more soldiers join. And these were the same people – 15 people in the company who were a problematic minority. And – simply – a tied up person, and they were kicking him in the stomach, in the head…
Wasn’t it reported to the commanding officers?
It was a commanding officer! An important commanding officer!
You come back home. Do you tell it to your mom and dad?
No way! I repressed it.
Your parents didn’t know nothing?
No way! You are part of it.
Mr Bronner, what did your son do in the Territories today?
Again, that Bronner’s reporting has illuminated for me that Gazans are human beings, and not functions, suggests that your accusations of his “bias” are really a picture of yours.
I’ve also been a journalist, writing for a progressive daily in DC in 1980 and 81, and encountered very different interpretations of events from the Washington Post reporters that periodically attended the same press conferences (Nicaraguan embassy, anti militarist Guatemalan and Salvadoran activists, Iranian activists).
I was horridly surprised at many of their reports. At the same time, in retrospect, their reports on Ortega’s brother (who presented at the Nicaraguan embassy, along with a liberation priest, and women’s artist collective leader) was more accurate than my reporting. He did turn out to be an ideolog, and the charismatic idealists were purged and either killed or exiled.
I’m happy for Bronner to inform me. I don’t assume that his reports are perfect, complete. They are more complete than EI’s, or Phil’s frankly.
If RW were a compass needle, he’d be pointing south.
stop whining, he will more than likely stay there. it is the nytimes and a gazillion jews read it daily.
Your own double standards on human rights makes your judgment useful in a purely negative way–if you like Bronner it means he’s probably not doing a very good job.
I read him myself, and he is mediocre at best.
“I’m happy for Bronner to inform me.”
Which is why you are such a duplicuitous hypocrite. Should we blame Bronner for the fact you are so ignorant Witty?
Witty, you really are an asshole
Just sit for a minute and think about that statement. Have Gazans really become human beings since Bronner enlightened you? Haven’t they been human beings for thousands of years before their population was tripled by refugees forced out of their homes by a bunch of Ashkenazi thugs?
Richard, you wrote:
“Again, that Bronner’s reporting has illuminated for me that Gazans are human beings, and not functions, suggests that your accusations of his “bias” are really a picture of yours.”
Are you really suggesting that in your mind Palestinians in Gaza were not human beings in your mind , and you only started viewing them as human being after reading Bronner’s reporting?
Hey Witty did you really need a Jew to humanize other humans for you? Wow. Sick mind.
Again, that Bronner’s reporting has illuminated for me that Gazans are human beings, and not functions, suggests that your accusations of his “bias” are really a picture of yours.
A lovely Freudian slip.
The fact that you needed to be “illuminated” that Gazans are humans speaks volumes about your own humanity.
I know the foreign press corps in Jerusalem intimately, having worked with foreign correspondents in Israel for about 15 years. It is a cozy assignment. You are in a major world hotspot, living a high standard of living in a beautiful and comfortable city, with excellent telecommunication. You have a remarkably free press to draw on, hordes of English-speaking (or a dozen other languages, if you prefer) officials, experts and celebrities lining up at your door. Information is literally in the air. If you scratch the surface even a little, you will find “human interest” stories of the kind that bring tears of joy to an editor’s eyes. You are a short flight away from all the major European capitals, and even – if you absolutely must – from major Arab capitals (via Cairo or Amman). Journalist heaven.
There’s only one problem. You live in an upper class Jewish-Israeli neighbourhood and interact almost entirely with Jewish Israelis. You may hang out at the American Colony cafe or bar (in East Jerusalem) to swap stories with other foreign journalists, hop over to Al Quds University for a chat with the ever-charming Sari Nusseiba, or even whoosh through the checkpoints to Ramallah for an interview Saeb Erikat or even Abbas himself. If you get to experience a “war zone”, it will be Sderot or Kiryat Shmoneh, not Gaza or Marjayoun. Arabs are dangerous, hostile, anti-Western, “closed”. You couldn’t possibly live among them or relate to them in the course of your work. Besides, they are unreliable. Oriental storytellers and pathological liars.
These traps are even easier to fall into if you are American, Jewish and otherwise connected to Israeli society – eg. through immediate or less immediate family.
So tell me, Mr. Pfeffer (if you take your own advice and read “pro-Palestinian blogs” such as this one), does it really make no difference in terms of journalist integrity and objectivity that a correspondent is Jewish or that he has an Israeli soldier at his “Shabbat table”?
Aside: A right-wing aunt of mine was very disturbed by the fact that foreign correspondents were getting information and analysis from an “extreme leftist” like me – compromising their “objectivity”.
Shmuel
No
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