The New York Times’s long story about the smearing of Palestinian football player Oday Aboushi amazingly does not name the three writers who smeared Aboushi. They are: Joe Kaufman of FrontPage, Adam Waksman the Columbia Computer Science Department PhD who moonlights for Yahoo Sports, and Jonathan Mael of Major League Baseball, who is said to be a former AIPAC intern.
Here’s all that NYT reporter Ben Shpigel reports about the smearers, in a piece titled, “Jets’ Aboushi Faces Aspersions for Being Palestinian:”
An article on the Web site The Front Page suggested that he had terrorist ties. A column on Yahoo Sports, since removed, said he held anti-Semitic views. An employee of Major League Baseball on Twitter compared Aboushi to Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots tight end charged with murder, before later apologizing.
Oh, and where’s the Hall of Shame in this piece? Let’s blame the victim: the piece focuses on Aboushi’s family back in Queens and includes this stuff about his father Ahmad:
His father has spent more than a decade in federal prison after being convicted of conspiracy to commit robbery, conspiracy to possess stolen property, theft from interstate shipment and transportation of a stolen vehicle, according to federal court documents.
Can you believe that? Exposing his father’s criminal record as if that’s relevant and failing to name the writers who defamed this fine young man?
Ayman Mohyeldin of NBC News is on the angle on twitter, calling the Times out for “poor journalism”:
Poor journalism for ignoring the sources of bigotry…
Not to mention the piece is entirely focused on his family having to defend itself as opposed to sources of bigotry
Reporter Ben Shpigel responded to Mohyeldin, making clear that his was a willful choice:
The intent of the piece was to put everything in its proper context and explain oday’s background..
The purpose wasn’t to give people/outlets whose views have been discredited further voice
You’re not giving them further voice by naming them. You’re shaming them. Which they deserve. That’s one purpose of journalism, name names.
By the way, here’s Waksman’s piece at Yahoo, which was taken down, but captured in a screenshot by Ben Doherty of EI.
Then Ben Shpigel doesn’t know what the news story is. It’s the smear, and who did it.
And the NYT editor who let Shpigel’s omission pass is to blame as well.
Filthy, slanderous “journalism” of cowards and bigots. Inciting to riot, anyone?
How I wish this talented young American of proud Palestinian heritage would sue, and sue heavily only to win.
The NYT is just a zio/neo/Israel rag ….thats all it is, so no point in being surprised by anything that appears there.
You should forward this to Margaret Sullivan, NYT’s excellent Public editor.
I have looked at the Waksman’s screen shot and the guy is lucky that it was taken down.
In some sense, it is not much of a smear, Waksman cites Kaufman and adds a dismissive wrapper that not all that much can be concluded from Kaufman’s writing. Then he goes totally off tangent, basically that Jets should be more careful about their public image — presumably, a prudent sport franchise would blacklist Aboushi as a precaution. (Hm. And Department of Computer Science of Columbia should be more careful of its public image and what Ph. D. students it does accept?) Precautionary blacklisting is a purely fascistic idea.
FrontPage is a fascistic outfit, and Waksman is a private citizen. But Jonathan Mael was (still is) a professional who behaved unprofessionally and stupidly.