The controversy about Ethan Bronner and his son goes deeper than the New York Times’ coverage of the Middle East.
I accept the argument that Bronner’s reporting is likely to be affected by those he lives and works with on a daily basis and by his son’s enlistment in the IDF.
But isn’t this the problem at the root of all journalism when it comes to covering conflict? The idea of "objective" journalism, after all, has always been a bit of a pipe dream, given that humans are involved. Isn’t the answer here not necessarily an Arab journalist to provide balance, but instead perhaps…an Eskimo? That is, someone at a remove, whose outlook isn’t already imprinted with a narrative?
For the most part Americans or Brits are reporting on the action in Afghanistan and Iraq (or, if not Americans, they are reporting to American editors). C.J. Chivers, a very able journalist for the TImes, is a former marine. He’s a guy you’d want in your foxhole. His pieces on the action in Afghanistan are gripping and heartbreaking. But he’s only telling one side of the story.
This is the fallacy of the "embedded journalist" practice — you’re going to identify with the guys who speak your language and who are saving your skin.
The only journalist I can think of who actually made an attempt to cross enemy lines and tell their side was the Australian Wilfred Burchett.
Burchett was the first western journalist to venture into Hiroshima after the bomb. He was the first to file copy describing the horrors of radiation sickness. He was summarily thrown out of Japan by the U.S. authorities, and William Laurence of the New York Times went on to refute the notion of radiation sickness — and won a Pulitzer. (From Common Dreams: the coverup that won a Timesman a Pulitzer).
Burchett later traveled to North Korea and North Vietnam and described the wars from their vantage points.
He was decried as a traitor.
Maybe he was; depends on what side you’re on.
Voskamp is editor of the Block Island Times.
I had never heard of Burchett, but he sounds like a true journalist. One of few, unfortunately.
Despite the excellent continuing coverage of ‘The Times’ potential biases here, the paper has gotten off lightly. Without Judith Miller would there have been much support amongst liberals for George Bush’s war? She provided ostensibly objective analysis of the WMD threat. Who could have taken seriously the images of Sadaam and mushroom clouds painted by Cheney et al. without the NYT?
Thank you for putting things in broader perspective. News is big business and foreign correspondents on stories that sell papers are stars. They do not rough it and they generally do not take personal risks. They are well-paid, enjoy extravagant perks and expense accounts and are accommodated in style. In I/P that means they will not live in Gaza or even Ramallah, and will limit their time in those “unpleasant” areas with their poverty and violence and danger and checkpoints (even for a VIP journalist) and claustrophobia. They are men and women of the world – a world of money and privilege, self-importance and profound navel-contemplation. They are executives, managing a few starving stringers from a chic office in West Jerusalem, tying everything up in a palatable corporate package while they contemplate their lecture tours, books and holidays. I have met exceptions, but I am sorry to say that this is the rule.
There’s a minor, but key character in the Hungarian movie (English speech) Sunshine–he’s a photo and movie maker man for successive regime takeovers; the movie is about the travails of three generations of a single Jewish Hungarian family that blends with the
historical macro-arc. This minor journalist-imagery character adapts to each succeeding fascist-stalinesque, and counter-stalinesque regime, from the rise of Nazi German influence in Hungary through to the Hungarian revolution. Nothing captures
the actual roll of the conventional press anywhere, anytime, better than this minor character.
In other words, they are the kind of people Bernard Avishai is likely to meet and mingle with. members in good standing of the “educated, globe trotting class”. People that are fun to talk to with tales to tell and measured analysis to reflect on the tales. people who know where the real lines and can be counted on to never cross them. People our side can even accpept criticism from because when they do criticize, the mirror they hold up is our own, the one that reveals the blemishes we can live with, because they make us look ever so more upstanding.
The well embedded journalist as the enlightened envoy of The West.
Danaa: The well embedded journalist as the enlightened envoy of The West.
That is a wonderful way of putting it. Bronner covers the ME, as a journalist embedded in Israeli society. We are all familiar with the problematic nature of military embedded journalism. What about its civilian equivalent?
Peace is constructed by understanding and appreciating the “enemy’s” experience and perspective derived.
Its not always possible though. Sometimes the enemy really does mean to hurt you.
And sometimes you make enemies out of people who might not have been, … because you hurt them.
“Sometimes the enemy really does mean to hurt you”
No, that’s only if they’re Arab. If they happen to be Israelis, better check yourself carefully, you might find you’re not really dead!
Gosh, you are disgusting, Witty. Gives me a good feeling to know you are willing to put all this on paper under your own name. Nobody can say they weren’t warned.
Thanks for the Burchett info. If there is a Ethan Bronner on the NY Times payroll, there should be a Palestinian reporter as well. Since the Times will never be fully objective, they should have a voice of balance, even if it potentially damages their Israeli expansionist plans.
Interesting story about Burchett. I remember reading him in the now defuncti National Guardian to supplement my news about what was happening in Vietnam between 1962 and 1970. Hadn’t heard of this Hiroshima story before. That is very interesting.
In 1945 the US military considered all information about the situation on the ground of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as highly classified. The story about the Yamahata photos (link to amazon.com
is another example of this. In 1945 the American press was fully incorporated into our military so it is not at all surprising to see them join with the military to suppress the truth about what happened in those two cities. But to win a Pulitzer for doing so that requires more than one exclamation point !!!