‘NYT’ quickly closes the blinds

by on June 11, 2010 13
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7 letters to the Times on Tony Judt's op-ed:  6 highly critical, and for balance, one pleading (a la Rodney King) that we all get along.

About David Samel

Attorney in New York City
Posted in Israel/Palestine

{ 13 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Debonnaire says:
    June 11, 2010 at 10:58 am

    Ah, but according to the swinish Meryl Yourish – The N.Y. Times is a cesspool of Jew hating chum. The paper would have to call for gas chambers to be built to process all of Israel’s “filthy shvatz goyim” slaves to meet her standards of balance.

  2. hophmi says:
    June 11, 2010 at 11:40 am

    Right, because the NYT never prints anything critical of Israel. You clearly don’t read the Times very often.

    • David Samel says:
      June 11, 2010 at 12:22 pm

      hophmi, it’s not that the Times never prints anything critical – the Judt piece is one example. It’s just that there is an overriding bias in favor of Israel. Look for yourself. Do you question my characterization of six of the seven letters as highly critical of Judt, and the seventh as being innocuous and neutral? Do you think you would ever see a similar publication of seven letters critical of Israel?

      • hophmi says:
        June 11, 2010 at 12:59 pm

        I don’t question it, but I imagine letters are published in proportion to the opinions received. They receive more pro-Israel letters than pro-Palestinian letters. If the pro-Palestinian movement were more organized, I imagine you’d see more pro-Palestinian letters. There have definitely been times when the ratio was less than 6 to 1.

        The position of the paper is clear from its editorials. It supports Israel’s right to exist and the two-state solution. If this is an overriding bias, then that’s what it is.

        • David Samel says:
          June 11, 2010 at 7:46 pm

          Interestingly, when the Times takes on-line comments, the “pro-Palestinian movement” as you call it does quite well. There are generally more such letters than pro-Israel letters, and they get “recommended” more often as well. Also the ratio here was not really 6 to 1, but 6 to zero, with one abstention. The fact is that the Judt piece itself is rather rare, and the Times saw the need to counterbalance it with overwhelmingly negative letters.

  3. decentjew says:
    June 11, 2010 at 12:33 pm

    The case against the Times’ bias is open and shut for anyone with a sand grain of honesty and integrity. It’s not even worth arguing about, as it has been quantitatively documented, (see for example, the study by If They Knew).

    Claims of objectivity at the Times fall squarely into the camp of evolution denial, holocaust denial, nakba denial, etc..in other words, dishonest lunacy.

  4. hughsansom says:
    June 11, 2010 at 1:03 pm

    I’ve written many letters to the Times over the years — always polite, brief, sticking to the facts. Not one has ever been published. Part of an obvious explanation is that I am often criticizing the Times reporting as opposed to commenting on some issue the paper has covered. The World’s Greatest Newspaper doesn’t like being criticized. So be it.

    But, a few years ago I noticed a letter repeating standard falsehoods about the Palestinians and, with the ease of searching on the internet, I searched the Times. It turned out that the Times had published 3 or 4 of this woman’s letters excoriating the Palestinians.

    Interesting isn’t it? Criticize the Israelis and you don’t have a hope in hell of being published. Criticize The Usual Suspects — especially the Palestinians — and you can say pretty much whatever you want, something we’re seeing again with the lynching of Helen Thomas and the flotilla massacre.

    • hophmi says:
      June 11, 2010 at 1:15 pm

      I’ve written plenty of letters to the Times over the years. I’ve gotten two published; one on Darfur and one on the Bob Sine controversy a few years ago. They’ve never published one of my letters on Israel, and I’ve sent many of them. By contrast, the Guardian, which has a pro-Palestinian bias, has published about 20 of my letters over the past five or six years. There are general ground rules. You’re not going to get published if all you do is bash the reporters. You’re not going to get published, particularly in the Times, if your letter is too long. And most of the time, you won’t get published because the Times just does not print many letters these days. General criticisms of reporting are never going to get through, even if they are short and to the point. Criticize a comment in the Guardian, and you might get published. Criticize the bias in Chris McGreal’s reporting, and they will not print your letter.

      One trick is to write as soon as possible after a new edition of the paper comes out. Then your letter is first on the pile. I have seen many, many pro-Palestinian letters in the Times. No one is putting up barriers.

      • Cliff says:
        June 11, 2010 at 5:43 pm

        The NY Times would be horrible even if Israel did not exist and even if there wasn’t a Zio-Lobby that bought politicians and exploited our democracy in favor of the interests of ethno-religious nationalists.

        Manufacturing Consent already has ‘been there and done that’ w/ respect to documenting the bias of the MSM.

        So it’s just common sense, to assume that the MSM would be even more biased w/ respect to Israel.

        Jewish identity has more political capital than any other ‘identity’ in this country. And identity politics is the name of the game.

        This too:

        link to belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu

        Plenty of other examples. Who cares really? It’s a given. The only people who deny it are ideological douchebags like you hophmi.

        • hophmi says:
          June 11, 2010 at 7:35 pm

          Wow, a nine-letter insult, Cliff.

          Unfortunately, the premise of the paper is flawed. In democracies, the country newspapers themselves usually care more than a foreign newspaper.

          I know how much you care about US access to oil, Cliff.

    • decentjew says:
      June 11, 2010 at 1:17 pm

      Didn’t you hear? Helen Thomas is actively planning a second Shoah:

      link to haaretz.com

      No problem at all publishing THIS sort of filth, as long as you’re a dirtball rabbi freak supporting the open sewer known as Israel.

  5. Les says:
    June 11, 2010 at 5:37 pm

    Israel is the occupier and the Palestinians are the occupied. That simple fact is turned upside down by the US media which describes Israel as a victim which is accepted by US news consumers. I don’t see anything that the Times is doing that helps the public to understand who is the occupier and who is the occupied. If it is successful journalism to mislead the public, we must assume that we are dealing with Israel’s fifth column.

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