Last week writers here landed on NYT Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren for insensitive comments she made about Palestinian culture on Facebook and in a radio interview. We weren’t alone. The Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan, citing a sharp reaction from “dismayed readers” and pundits, has taken up the case (“Problems With a Reporter’s Facebook Posts, and a Possible Solution”). Sullivan judges that Rudoren is fit for the job in Jerusalem but that going forward her (voluble) social media commentary will be edited by a Times editor.
Ms. Rudoren regrets some of the language she used, particularly the expression “ho-hum.”
“I should have talked about steadfastness or resiliency,” she told me by phone on Tuesday. “That was a ridiculous word to use.” In general, she said, “I just wasn’t careful enough.”
Now The Times is taking steps to make sure that Ms. Rudoren’s further social media efforts go more smoothly. The foreign editor, Joseph Kahn, is assigning an editor on the foreign desk in New York to work closely with Ms. Rudoren on her social media posts.
The idea is to capitalize on the promise of social media’s engagement with readers while not exposing The Times to a reporter’s unfiltered and unedited thoughts.
Given the spotlight that the Jerusalem bureau chief is bound to attract, and Ms. Rudoren’s self-acknowledged missteps, this was a necessary step.
The alternative would be to say, “Let’s forget about social media and just write stories.” As The Times fights for survival in the digital age, that alternative was not a good one.
Count me an unhappy reader. I like the transparency of social media, I like to know about reporters’ biases. The Rudoren moment showed us that even reporters for the most prestigious journals are real people with real responses, for better or worse; and I believe that Rudoren’s apprehensions about Palestinian culture are widely shared in the US establishment (indeed, I have admitted my own apprehensions re Islam). In the unfolding of the story, we got to see Rudoren, who is a smart, tough, thoughtful person, respond and evolve before our eyes. Now the Times, worried about its authority being diminished, needs to pull the curtain.
Chimes in Pamela Olson: No more unfiltered thoughts from Mrs. Rudoren– it probably would have happened sooner or later anyway, but it’s a pity. It was a fascinating look into the mind of an establishment journalist just getting her feet wet, unconscious biases and all, revealing things that are supposed to be kept well hidden. It’s always fun to watch the newbies– reporters, politicians, thinktankers– slowly learn the various orthodoxies they must adhere to.
I think this is interesting in terms of the role of observer: Ruderon was present at Palestinian funerals, but doesn’t report on how obvious her presence was, or the potential that her own presence (was she with a group of journalists/friends?) would affect the level of emotion shared among the mourners – more usually limited to family and friends. Similarly, she (with the Times blessing and guidance) is tempering the level of spontaneity she will show in her own social media posts, because there are “others” watching and listening.
In news coverage of Middle East violence, we often see some Muslim firing off his automatic weapon at the distance, with no apparent target, and I often get the impression that the “news team” have set the whole exercise up, since it doesn’t look like anyone engaged in an actual firefight. People behave and say things differently in different settings, and it says a lot about them and their relationships with others to see how they modulate what they say for the specific audience.
Journalists should, of course, be hyper-sensitive to this effect.
Also, what is the old advice from the grizzled lawyer? Don’t ever do or say anything you wouldn’t want to read about on the front page of the paper. Which seems to be internalizing a sort of “observer check” on otherwise unrestrained activity.
what a steaming pile of crap.
More recently, during the Gaza conflict, she wrote one Facebook post in which she described Palestinians as “ho-hum” about the death of loved ones, wrote of their “limited lives” and, in another, said she shed her first tears in Gaza over a letter from an Israeli family. The comments came off as insensitive and the reaction was sharp, not only from media pundits, but also from dismayed readers.
the comments didn’t ‘come off’ as anything. they are clearly, unequivocally reductionist, ignorant and racist.
Philip Weiss, the anti-Zionist Jewish-American journalist who writes about the Middle East for Mondoweiss, his Web site, wrote “she seems culturally bound inside the Israeli experience.”
‘anti-zionist, jewish-american journalist’. what no ‘east coast’ ‘ivy league’ ‘upper middle class’ ‘liberal’ hyphen-hyphen-hyphen. boy, the times sure is doggedly on the scent of *ahem* ‘identity’.
Ms. Rudoren regrets some of the language she used, particularly the expression “ho-hum.” “I should have talked about steadfastness or resiliency,” she told me by phone on Tuesday. “That was a ridiculous word to use.” In general, she said, “I just wasn’t careful enough.”
exactly, judi. take a bit more time to refer to the NYT-issued ‘thesaurus of racial code words’. save you some trouble.
Now The Times is taking steps to make sure that Ms. Rudoren’s further social media efforts go more smoothly. The foreign editor, Joseph Kahn, is assigning an editor on the foreign desk in New York to work closely with Ms. Rudoren on her social media posts.
f*cking brilliant. the bureau chief of one of the most important journalistic posts in the world has been put in the SPED class for journalists. i ask again, for the umpteenth time, what were her professinal qualifications for this assignment in the first place?
There is, of course, a larger question here. Do Ms. Rudoren’s personal musings, as they have seeped out in unfiltered social media posts (and, notably, have been criticized from both the right and the left), make her an unwise choice for this crucially important job?
‘crucially important’? not ‘importantly crucial’? (maybe judi is relatively qualified given the state of talent over at the NYT.) no, she’s not an unwise choice for this ‘crucially important job’ because she happened to stick her foot in her mouth. she’s not professionally qualified.
On this, we should primarily judge her reporting work as it has appeared in the paper and online. During the recent Gaza conflict, she broke news, wrote with sophistication and nuance about what was happening, and endured difficult conditions.
Mr. Kahn described her reporting over the past month as “exemplary.”
just plain exemplary? not ‘excellently exemplary’? or ‘exemplarily excellent’. and, no, it wasn’t.
I prefer the Electronic Intifada approach. Some sings wong. http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/responding-new-york-times-public-editors-smear-against-me
“The foreign editor, Joseph Kahn, is assigning an editor on the foreign desk in New York to work closely with Ms. Rudoren on her social media posts. The idea is to capitalize on the promise of social media’s engagement with readers while not exposing The Times to a reporter’s unfiltered and unedited thoughts.”
Wow, can you smell the anti-Semitism a mile away? So Ms. Rudoren is now the classic ‘pushy’ unmannerly Jew, who can’t be trusted to speak in the smooth refined way WASPS do? I mean, I hate to put it like this, but what else could it be?
Ms. Rudoren, as a woman and a Jew, you should resist this paternal hierarchal male-chauvanist control, and be your own bad Zionist self. If you don’t, who knows where it might lead? Compulsory head-scarves in the news-room? Don’t be ashamed of who you are. Let your six-pointed freak flag fly!
Generally, Freedom of Expression is important. In this case, the pseudo-censorship will serve to help conceal Rudoren’s biases, but not treat them.
So instead of Palestinians being portrayed under attack as “ho hum”, they will be portrayed as silent or event “steadfast”, with a connotation and slant still pointing in the same direction, while better giving the reader the illusion of nonbias.