Yesterday on this site, Bruce Wolman, a Jew, did a great post where he pointed out that nearly everyone on Obama's Israel-Palestine negotiation team is Jewish.
I know: that's uncomfortable. But is it relevant? Yes.
Here is Jonathan Cook skilfully navigating the same territory around the fact that all the Times reporters in Jerusalem are Jewish (and the Washington Post just named a Jewish woman to its bureau). By the way, none of this can be fully understood till you throw in an analysis of Jewish wealth/Establishment-success in American society. Sorry, but it's part of the picture. Cook:.
[Times] super-stringers like [Taghreed El-] Khodary have limited influence over the news process in which they take part. To have reached the status of super-stringer, they must have shown that they understand very precisely what is expected of them, what language is used (eg. “fence” or “wall”; “illegal settlement” or “disputed neighbourhood”), what stories are covered and which angles are preferred. In most cases, they will be told what story the editors want from them rather than initiate the story. Their job is often to retell a report from the wire agency, using their own contacts and knowledge to give “added value”. In the main, this is quite unlike Bronner’s role: usually he will advise his editors which topics are important and select his own angles. The difference of status between the “star reporter” and the “super-stringer” is similar to that between a tenured professor and a supply teacher.
A further point worth noting is that Abunimah’s list of recent Jewish / Israeli reporters covering the conflict for the NYT is, as far I know, not exhaustive. My impression is that most of the NYT’s senior reporters over the past two decades have been Jewish or Israeli. Like Abunimah, I am uncomfortable judging a journalist’s record of reporting based on his or her ethnic identification. But these scruples should not blind us to the danger that the apparent long-term structural bias in the NYT’s selection processes may have contributed significantly to distorting Western understanding of what is going on in the conflict. The consistent favouring of Jewish reporters for the Israeli-Palestinian beat needs explaining by the editors of the NYT. This is especially true given my first point about the lack of Palestinian, or Arab, reporters who have any real input into the newsgathering processes of the Western media.
You mean biased Jews like Roger Cohen?
So tell me, Richard, how does Roger Cohen influence the process of reporting the news from Jerusalem?
Mooser’s reply is more on-topic than mine — the post was about the times Jerusalem reporting.
He’s British, doesn’t count. It’s American Jews who are the problem.
Witty: Exactly. He’s more reasonable than you, but still caught up in racism.
Roger Cohen’s Feb 12th column was an excellent example of zionist discourse. I’m sure he’s a nice reasonable guy, but his assumptions are quite racist — eg an admiring reference to the “zionist dream”. Hell, the first paragraph gives away the game with his assertion that the US has tried to coax “Zionism and Arab nationalism” to “peaceful coexistence”. Coax is a strange word to describe bankrolling Israel’s arsenal.
Yeah, Witty actually believes Cohen is biased against Israel the state forever, as distinguished from being critical of Israeli conduct & the project of Greater Israel & USA enablement of both–thus Witty reveals himself as a hard core right wing Zionist and to hell with the fallout to the rest of the world. Witty would put it he is only fully supportive of Israel as compared to being only very much supportive of Palestinians–but his view of Cohen shows his true colors. Witty is the epitome of crocodile tears.
RE: “But these scruples should not blind us to the danger that the apparent long-term structural bias in the NYT’s selection processes may have contributed significantly to distorting Western understanding of what is going on in the conflict.”
Gee, whouda thunk.
Let me go ask Joe The Plumber or Palin. If I find they are really ignorant of the history of the I-P conflict and the US role in it, I should simply blame it on both of them being
stupid goys? The USA MSM bias on this issue has no hand in the game result? Please.
Both the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books are very Jewish but very different when it comes to opinion on Israel/Palestine. At the Cooper Union debate about the Walt/Mearsheimer report a few years ago, Tony Judt pointed up to the sponsor’s banner over the stage, The London Review of Books, to express his disappointment that it wasn’t the New York Review of Books. British Jewish literarati opinion is clearly far more critical of the occupation than their American counterparts. I sensed that the hand of Barbara Epstein was no longer at the helm of the New York Review of Books when I saw anti-Muslim and anti-Arab slurs appear in the magazine which she would have easily identified as anti-intellectual. The American Jew, Erika Jong wrote, “Arabs and other animals I have known.” Her racism obviously disqualifies her as an intellectual. I find it difficult to imagine that coming from a British writer.
RE: ‘longterm structural bias’ – Weiss
SEE: NYT Sees UN-Syria Conspiracy Theory, By Robert Parry, 02/15/10
(SYNOPSIS) The New York Times simply refuses to deal with “enemy” Muslim states with any sense of objectivity or fairness, reaffirming its deep-seated bias again on Sunday with the publication of a one-sided article about the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on its fifth anniversary.
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to consortiumnews.com
RE: ‘longterm structural bias’ – Weiss
SEE: The New York Times, Israel and Ethan Bronner ~ No Conflict of Interest … With the Conventional Wisdom , By Robert Jensen, 02/09/10
(EXCERPT)…The problems with the coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the Times, and virtually every other corporate-commercial news outlet in the United States, are not the result of biases of specific reporters, though individual reporters may indeed have allegiances to one side of an issue. The mainstream media have a conflict of interest at a deeper level — they are unwilling to break with the conventional wisdom about the conflict that dominates in the United States, especially among U.S. policymakers. U.S. news coverage of the conflict relentlessly presents the news within this Israeli narrative, primarily because powerful forces in this country find that narrative useful for U.S. strategic interests in the region, and U.S. journalists tend to fall in line with that view.
As one well-known mainstream reporter once grudgingly admitted to students at my university, American journalism tends to “follow the flag.” In this case the U.S. flag is planted firmly on the Israeli side of the conflict…
ENTIRETY – link to counterpunch.org