I ran an irresponsible headline the other day; I took Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin at face value and averred that in an interview with Rubin, Hannah Rosenthal, the State Department’s anti-anti-semitism official, had condemned a Time magazine article as being anti-semitic “absolutely.”
I should have known better. The Q-and-A was so crudely conveyed that you didn’t know what Rosenthal was saying was absolutely anti-Semitic. Well, Matt Duss flashed some shoe leather, at ThinkProgress, and reached out to Rosenthal, who makes clear that she was misrepresented. I’d note that my earlier post, where I said that Rubin has college-level journalism skills (I’m not talking about her as an essayist, mind you, there she knows what she’s doing), stands. Duss:
“We did not discuss the substance of the articles and I clearly told her that I didn’t read Time,” Rosenthal said via email. “I reacted to the headlines only that depict stereotypes of anti-Semitism and that seek to compare policies to the Holocaust.”
According to Rosenthal, Rubin blatantly misrepresented Rosenthal’s answers as a condemnation of specific articles Rosenthal made clear she hadn’t read. This should raise serious questions about the veracity of the rest of the interview. At the very least, the Post owes a correction to its readers, and an apology to Rosenthal.
