My initial reaction to the news that Ethan Bronner’s son had joined the IDF was a shrug. I have found Bronner’s reporting to be biased toward Israel, but only a reflection of the deeply entrenched institutional biases that control our media. Bronner is biased for the same reason that Israel, with an advantage in military capability over Hamas that would conjure up a New Orleans Saints – middle school football game, is seen as the party grappling with the problem of "asymmetric warfare." It’s the same reason that the deaths of 3000 civilians on American soil is seen as the greatest calamity to befall mankind, while the US military’s toll of at least many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians is seen as an unfortunate byproduct of war. It’s the same reason that anti-Iraq-war commentators on TV trickled from a small handful to near zero after the 2003 invasion. It’s the same reason that nuclear Israel’s overtly-belligerent statements against Iran are treated as the legitimate discourse of self-defense against the dire "threat" of Ahmadinejad’s musings that the "Jewish State" will transform to a state of equal citizens. It’s the same reason that when Ali Abunimah draws an equivalence between the IDF, which is capable of killing millions and has killed thousands in the past four years alone, and Hamas, whose strength and death toll are minuscule by comparison, most Americans would be outraged at the insult to Israel.
If Bronner’s son were a pacifist or if Bronner were childless, would his reporting be appreciably different? If Bronner were reassigned to cover China or Iceland, would his replacement, Jewish or not, be appreciably different? Undoubtedly, the answers are no. But while the camel’s back already has been badly broken for a very long time, Bronner’s son just may be a last straw that exposes the grotesquely skewed US media coverage of the Middle East. Maybe, hopefully, it will be the start of some reactive movement in the opposite direction.
There’s certainly no _guarantee_ that a replacement would be better than Bronner, but _if_ they would give the job to a non-Jew, I think they’d be more likely to get someone less bound up in Zionist assumptions and more open to the Palestinian perspective. On NPR, for example, I’m not always happy, to say the least, with the work of Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, their current Jerusalem correspondent, but she’s done some decent stories that Linda Gradstein could never even have imagined!
Unfortunately, there’s no reason to suspect that Times management has any interest in giving the job to someone less bound up in Zionist assumptions….
There’s certainly no _guarantee_ that a replacement would be better than Bronner, but _if_ they would give the job to a non-Jew, I think they’d be more likely to get someone less bound up in Zionist assumptions and more open to the Palestinian perspective.
I beg to differ. The NYT could very well send Joe the Plumber or Sarah Palin to cover the region. She has her own show on Fox now, doesn’t she?
Well said David, I agree completely. It’s definitely a last-straw phenomenon masking institutionalized tendencies.
On the other hand, there are Jewish Israelis who publish in Israeli newspapers (and in English, too) opinions and perhaps also facts that rarely see light of day in US MSM. These could be copied to the NYT — if the NYT were interested in this side of things — and there might be no need for any NYT bureau chief there.
If the NYT had a Chinese bureau-chief in Israel who could speak and read English (but it would be important to speak and read Hebrew and Arabic as well), the NYT could — if only it would — provide balanced reporting.
Taking up this issue is silly — except for the undoubted fun of twitting dear NYT — because the American system of, what ? — “thought police”, “received wisdom”, “communal acceptable discourse”, “political correctness”, “socially and economically enforced censorship” — see my essay on US governance — means that US MSM are not going to touch certain facts and issues with a bargepole, and it just doesn’t matter very much who the NYT bureau chief is.
On the other hand, if NPR is occasionally doing better, perhaps I’m wrong! thanks to hnorr for word of Lourdes Garcia-Navarro.
Oops, I used the blockquote incorrectly. The question was in response to “If the NYT had a Chinese bureau-chief in Israel who could speak and read English (but it would be important to speak and read Hebrew and Arabic as well), …”
Pingback: Coyotes Ship Boedker and Hoggan back to San Antonio | Phoenix … | San Antonio Rampage AHL Announcer
Pingback: Phoenix Coyotes Assign Boedker and Hoggan Back to San Antonio … | San Antonio Rampage AHL Announcer