The New York Times has now confirmed recent internet rumors that the son of Ethan Bronner, for the past two years its chief correspondent in Israel, has enlisted in the Israeli army. As the website Electronic Intifada pointed out, the internal policies of the Times state that journalists might have to be reassigned if the activities of family members created real or even "apparent" conflicts of interest.
Rather surprisingly, last Sunday the Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt decided to address the issue in his Week in Review column concluding that while Bronner's reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was "superb," his family ties (Bronner is also married to an Israeli woman) created enough of an apparent conflict of interest to warrant his reassignment. In support, Hoyt quoted Alex Jones, the director of a Harvard center that studies the press and a former Pulitzer Prize-winning report for the Times: "The appearance of a conflict of interest is often as important or more important than a real conflict of interest. I would reassign him."
Hoyt invited Bill Keller, the Times executive editor, to respond in the same column. In his typical fashion, Keller came out swinging, dismissively rejecting Hoyt's and Jones' reasoning -- not to mention, of course, all the non-New York Times insiders whose views on the substance of Bronner's reporting were far more critical than Hoyt's. Bronner would not be reassigned, Keller wrote, because for many years "he has reported scrupulously and insightfully" on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; "pandering to zealots," Keller concluded, would mean "cheating readers who genuinely seek to be informed."
The New York Times and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
If Bronner's reporting had been genuinely "scrupulous" -- informed, accurate and unbiased -- almost surely his family ties with Israel would have never become an issue, and it would not be necessary to distinguish between real and merely "imaginary or hypothetical" conflicts of interest (in Keller's words). Whether or not his son's enlistment in the IDF will affect Bronner's future reporting, the real issue is that his news reports and analyses -- to be sure, with certain important exceptions, as I shall note below -- have generally followed what I think can be called the overall policy of the New York Times on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Which is why, of course, Keller gave the back of his hand to criticisms of him. And also, why it would hardly matter if the Times, for cosmetic or public relations reasons, chose to reassign Bronner -- his replacement probably would be no better, and might well be worse.
In short, the central issue in this dispute is less that of Ethan Bronner than it is of the New York Times itself. Close observers of Times' news coverage and commentary about Israel have long known that it is typically slanted in a "pro-Israeli" direction; I have written about this at some length in a professional journal; what follows is a brief summary of my argument.
The bias and downright disingenuousness -- it can't be merely ignorance -- of the Times has played a major role in perpetuating the mythology about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is still dominant in Israel and the United States -- even though that mythology has been decisively discredited by serious Israeli, U.S. and European historians, academicians, and journalists. Indeed, much of it has been publicly challenged by a number of former Israeli political and government leaders, as well as retired generals and intelligence officials.
Consequently, most of the mythology -- that the Arabs are the aggressors, Israel the victim; that the leading Arab states don't accept the existence of Israel; that the true goal of the Palestinian uprisings has not been to gain a state of their own but to destroy Israel; that the Palestinians "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" to settle the conflict; and much more -- can no longer be regarded as either intellectually or morally respectable. More importantly, the mythology continues to play a major role in preventing a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and thus is a disaster for the true interests of both Israel and the United States.
Nonetheless, the mythology still heavily influences the New York Times: in its editorials, on its op-ed pages, and in its news coverage. I shall discuss only the latter, in part because of space constraints but also because the bias and inaccuracies that are common in the newspaper's editorials and opinion pieces can be regarded as both more obvious and less serious than those in its news coverage.
The Times does not merely report the news, it also makes it: that is, to a great extent it determines what its readers will consider to be major news and how they are likely to react to it. It can do so in several ways. First, the paper can simply fail to cover events, or at least minimize their significance by the placement and depth of its news stories. For example, throughout the course of the Israeli occupation there have been numerous investigative reports by Israeli and international journalists and human rights organizations on the consequences of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian people; while usually prominently covered in Haaretz -- Israel's best and most influential serious newspaper, often described as Israel's New York Times -- the Times typically either ignores these reports or, at best, buries them in one-paragraph stories in the middle of the news pages.
Secondly, the Times can and does manage the news by its decision on how to cover government or military statements about important matters: it can simply report the statements, or it can alert its readers to obvious contradictions between what officials or generals say and observable realities. On controversial issues, even in its straight news stories, the Times normally doesn't just blandly print statements by public officials, without some kind of subtle or not-so-subtle warnings to its readers that skepticism may be warranted. For example, the Times is skeptical about the Iraq war; consequently, its reports on the latest optimistic statements by U.S. or Iraqi officials are often accompanied by signals from the reporter that the statements are self-interested, or even in conflict with certain known facts.
When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however, the Times takes a different approach: its news stories often simply adopt the Israeli point of view, or at best contain an underlying premise that the full truth about the conflict, sometimes even about clearly observable facts, is unknowable. That being the case (the premise holds), all the Times can do is report conflicting Israeli and Palestinian statements or "perceptions," what Israelis "say" vs. what Palestinians "say." (For examples, see my own blog, cited above)
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Times manages the news by how it deals with crucial historical context. In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the paper typically deemphasizes or even fails to note the obvious distinction between Palestinian and Israeli violence: namely that the Palestinians seek to end an increasingly repressive forty-three year occupation, whereas the Israelis seek to maintain most of it. Without this context in the very forefront of the discussion, there can be no intellectually or morally serious analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ethan Bronner and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
As mentioned above, in some ways, Ethan Bronner has been less one-sided than previous Times correspondents in Israel. On occasion, he has indicated skepticism about some Israeli claims, such as that Israel's growing isolation in the world is principally a matter of its unfair "image," rather than a consequence of its occupation and harsh treatment of the Palestinians. Moreover, Bronner's reports during last year's Israeli attack on Gaza provided considerable evidence of the devastating impact of the attack on the Gazan civilian population.
Consequently, the case against Bronner's fairness and credibility is not unmixed. Unfortunately, though, in the last year many of his straight news reporting and occasional "news analyses" have contained false symmetries between the Israelis and the Palestinians or have been deficient in tone, emphasis, or context; indeed, he has sometimes even ignored or obscured observable facts. Here I will discuss three particularly troubling Bronner stories.
First, in a June 29, 2009 news account Bronner employed the Times' characteristic "he said/she said" method: After reporting that the Palestinians "accuse" Israel of making a peace settlement impossible by its continued expansion of the Jewish settlements, the next sentence states that "Israel says the real problem is Arab rejection of its existence in any borders at all..."
Really? Which Arabs might those be? Egypt reached a peace agreement with Israel in the 1970s, and Jordan did so in the 1990s -- both based on a formal acceptance of Israel within its pre-1967 war borders. In 1988 Yasir Arafat and his PLO organization officially accepted the existence of Israel as well as the pre-1967 borders, and his successors in the West Bank have consistently reiterated that policy since then.
Who is left, then? Perhaps Syria? Hardly: it is an established fact that since the 1990s Syria has repeatedly sought an agreement with Israel in which a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights -- conquered by Israel during the 1967 war -- would be accompanied by a peace settlement that included extensive security guarantees and full normalization of diplomatic and economic relations.
Saudi Arabia? Certainly not: since 1982 the Saudis have repeatedly and publicly offered Israel a genuine peace settlement and normalization of relations, conditioned on the withdrawal of Israel from all territories it conquered in 1967 and a negotiated settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem. Moreover, it has taken the lead in convincing the rest of the Arab world to endorse such an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict; in 2007 the twenty-two states of the Arab League unanimously endorsed what has come to be known as the Saudi peace plan. Even Iran has said that it will go along with the Saudi plan if the Palestinians agreed to a settlement based on it.
That pretty much leaves Hamas -- but even that organization has been gradually moving towards a reluctant de facto (though not formal) acceptance of Israel if it withdraws from all the occupied territories. In short, the overwhelming evidence -- none of it noted by Bronner -- demonstrates the absurdity of the standard and oft-reiterated Israeli claim.
Second, on November 26, 2009 Bronner wrote a news analysis in which, as he has often done, he juxtaposed Palestinian charges about Israeli actions with denials by Israeli military spokesmen -- as if there was not a wealth of evidence supporting the Palestinian charges, not to mention a long and readily-demonstrable history of Israeli military lying. In a characteristic New York Times false symmetry about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Bronner concluded that "each side in this dispute" -- that is, the oppressors and their victims -- "has stopped listening to the complaints and the accusations of the other."
Third, consider Bronner's recent account of Israel's reaction to the Goldstone report. While noting "the report's harsh conclusion that the death of noncombatants and destruction of civilian infrastructure were part of an official [Israeli] plan to terrorize the Palestinian population," Bronner devotes most of the article to statements from Israeli military leaders who deny the charges.
For example, Bronner quotes from his interview with Gen. Avichai Mandelblit, the Israeli Military Advocate General, who claimed that the Goldstone report went beyond anything of which others had accused Israel: "I have read every report, from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Arab League....It is when you read these other reports and complaints that you realize how truly vicious the Goldstone report is. He made it look like we set out to go after the economic infrastructure and civilians, that it was intentional. It's a vicious lie."
There are several things wrong with this story. First, Bronner's summary of the Goldstone report understates the full scope of what it considered to be deliberate Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure. Bronner's story focuses on the destruction of a sewage facility, a chicken farm, a cement plant, water wells, and 4000 private homes: bad as those would be, the report discussed a far wider range of Israeli attacks on the "foundations of civilian life in Gaza" (as it put it), including many other agricultural and food production systems (farms, orchards, greenhouses, fishing boats, food and drink factories) as well as the Gaza electric system, water works, construction industries, general industrial sites, and even hospitals and ambulances.
Second, Bronner does not challenge Mandelblit's characterization of the reports of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, both of which -- along with other human rights organizations -- repeatedly issued public statements and investigative reports that (just like the Goldstone report) condemned Israel's actions as, in Amnesty's words, "disproportionate, indiscriminate or direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects," which constituted war crimes." Perhaps Bronner didn't read these reports for himself.
Third, even though it is clearly the case that an overwhelming majority of Israelis do not believe that Israel deliberately attacked Gazan civilians, Bronner's assertion -- in his own voice -- that "virtually no one in Israel" so believes is a significant exaggeration that essentially dismisses a number of strong dissenting statements and reports by Israeli journalists and human rights organizations. Moreover -- though this is undoubtedly asking too much -- Bronner could have reflected on his own reports during the attack and at least suggested that what really matters is the accuracy of the Goldstone report rather than what Israelis, no matter how many of them, believe about it.
The Irresponsibility of the New York Times
The Bronner affair is but one example of the many ways in which in its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Times fails to meet its most basic responsibilities as the world's most influential newspaper: to fully and truthfully report on issues of the highest importance.
During World War II--as Times officials now apologetically acknowledge--the newspaper chose not to publish or downplayed a number of stories about the emerging Holocaust, presumably because it did not want to appear to be excessively concerned with Jewish issues. Today Israel and indeed the United States itself cannot afford continued inadequate coverage, inaccurate analysis, and biased commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel is descending deeper and deeper into catastrophe, perhaps in the end an unimaginable one: if the conflict continues, it is hard to see how nuclear or biological terrorism can be indefinitely avoided. Moreover, it is not just Israeli survival that is at stake: although the other issues play a role, there is not the slightest doubt that rage at U.S. policies towards Israel are a major factor, perhaps the major factor, in the rage of Muslim fanatics towards our country.
The collapse of the Obama administration's initial efforts to bring about a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict demonstrates -- once again -- that there is no chance for serious changes in the continuing U.S. policy of near-unconditional support of Israel without a reeducation of American officials, congressmen, and political elites. A crucial place to begin such a reeducation process would be in the pages of the New York Times.
Tragically, as the Bronner issue and the response of the Times both illustrate and symbolize, the prospects that this will occur are scant. Thirty or forty years from now, once again far too late, will the Times again apologize for its continued failures of truthful and responsible journalism?
This is a condensed version of a longer piece that I have just published on my own blog. Those seeking a fuller discussion can find it there.
I'm opposed to a policy of killing civilians, or using them as a means to an end, and I understand that Israel has a right to defend itself. The Palestinians, if they don't have an enemy to fight, will fight each other. In about 20 years from now you'll remember what I'm telling you, the conflict will be among various groups within Hamas. They're already beginning to quarrel over control of the money."
"You Jews should be aware: You will never, but never have peace with Hamas.
Islam, as the ideology that guides them, will not allow them to achieve a peace agreement with the Jews.
They believe that tradition says that the Prophet Mohammed fought against the Jews and that therefore they must continue to fight them to the death.
They have to take revenge against anyone who did not agree to accept the Prophet Mohammed,
like the Jews who are seen in the Koran as monkeys and the sons of pigs. They speak in terms of historical rights that were taken from them.
In the view of Hamas, peace with Israel contradicts sharia and the Koran, and the Jews have no right to remain in Palestine."
Like many others, I gave up my subscription to the Times, because of it's pandemic biases.
Its enough to give it up over its William Kristol articles, Its cheerleading of the war in Iraq and its unquestioning support for the neocons. The NYT is a cauldron of grasping republican evil.
yellow journalists with their yellow journalism.
One blatantly biased media outlet has been exposed for what they are, only (nearly) every main stream media organ in the US to go!
I remember, in 2002, having to run several errands in Manhattan on a day in which there were both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian rallies
The pro-Israel rally, with police-estimated crowds of between 70-75,000, was described in the Times as being attended by "over two thousand", and no photos accompanied the article. The pro-Palestinian rally, with police-estimated crowds of 1100-1200, was described as being attended by "well over a thousand", and the accompanying article had a photo of the spears' podium, rather than the crowd
This had the effect of making it appear as though the two rallies were similarly attended
As I said, I was in Manhattan that day and my path took me passed both rallies. As someone who has helped to organize many political rallies, I thought the police estimates were accurate
Israel has intentionally targeted civilian economic infrastructure, as well as persons; this has a long history & supportive evidence in the Occupied Territory, Gaza & Lebanon. Israeli attacks on Lebanon were against many civilian works including the Beirut power station, its fuel oil tanks & safety berms to hold oil spills, that fouled & poisoned the Mediterranean. The Israelis refused to allow any clean-up to begin until about 90 miles of Med coastline & fisheries had been poisoned. Another example of intentional attacks on economic/civilian works is the long standing policy to destroy Palestinian olive groves. The olive is symbolic of Palestinian culture & their economy depends on them. Palestinian olive trees/groves have been destroyed by the IDF & settlers, and when not destroyed, stolen, & removed to Israel (pre-’67 borders) or to West Bank settlements.
The bottom line is that American security interests have been deliberately endangered & subverted to support Israeli policies/goals & some of our press has been instrumental. Both the pro-Israel lobby in America, as well as their influence to manipulate our press to the pro-Israel view/agenda, should be ended & our security interests
Imagine my surprise when I moved to the ME just to find out that Al Jazeera is NOT a propaganda network and that Palestinians are boringly normal people who, in fact, DO love their children.
Worth watching.
It seems that you object to reports referencing Israeli government spokespersons' statements. In any objective and informative account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these statements are needed to understand the motivations of key political movements and figures.
The New York Times has quoted Khaled Meshaal, and as abhorent as many of his views and statements may be to many, certain of his words were published because they provide crucial context and insight into the conflict. Take this May 4th, 2009 article about Hamas' claims to have stopped rocket attacks:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/world/middleeast/05meshal.html
In the article many of Meshaal's statements, to which many Israelis would react with outrage, are published uncritically. They are done so because this particular article is about Hamas, and about the leader of Hamas' opinions on the conflict. Likewise the articles about Israeli government response to the ongoing conflict are appropriate in the context of news reports about that very subject.
1.) When was the country 'palestine' founded and by whom?
2.) What were its borders?
3.) What was its capital?
4.) What were its major cities?
5.) Name at least 1 'palestinian leader' before Arafat
6.) What is the language of the 'Country of palestine'?
7.) What was the prevalent religion of the 'ancient country of palestine'?
8.) What was is currency?
9.) Take any date in history and say what the exchange rate for 'palestinian' unit is againt the dollar, yen, yuan, mark, or pound on that date.
10.) Since there is no 'palestine' today what caused its demise and when?
11.) Why did the 'palestinians' never try to become independent until after the devastating defeat of invading Arab states in the 1967 Six Day War?
Frankly, it's laughable to me that a kid needs to be taught hatred by his school and his parents when daily he is chased and threatened by settlers, was kicked out of his family home, doesn't have enough water, watches his father get humiliated regularly at checkpoints....
And this is what's happening to the 'good' Palestinians in the West Bank who DON'T shoot rockets into Israel.
While Palestinian children have good reason to fear and hate Israel, the blatant emotional manipulation of young Israelis on display in 'Defamation' is disturbing to say the least.