They are the two newspapers I despise the most!
"WPost, NYT Show Tough-Guy Swagger
When Americans wonder how their country has ended up in so many pointless and seemingly endless conflicts around the world, like the meandering Afghan War and the bloody mess in Iraq, a good place to start would be the “prestige” newspapers, the Washington Post and the New York Times.
And, they are now engaged in a replay regarding Iran.
On Saturday, the Post’s editorial writers joined their counterparts at the Times in a new Establishment chorus demanding “regime change” in Iran through the ouster of the country’s Islamic-directed government by supporting the opposition Green Movement, which lost last year’s presidential election and then mounted public protests.
Since that election one year ago, it has become an accepted truth in the major U.S. news media that the Green Movement’s candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi won the election which was then stolen by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
So, the thinking goes, President Barack Obama must abandon his naïve efforts to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program and instead ratchet up bilateral tensions by throwing more U.S. support behind the Iranian opposition – and winking at Israeli plans to launch airstrikes against military targets inside Iran. Those attacks would supposedly spark an uprising in Iran.
This wishful thinking is reminiscent of the run-up to war in Iraq. Then, too, the Post and Times – plus much of Washington’s foreign policy elite – bought into a mythology of their own making, wanting to believe that the internal opposition in Iraq was much stronger than it was and that negotiating with the official leadership was a sign of weakness and betrayal.
The fantasies about Iraq led to neoconservative dreams of a "cake walk" for U.S. troops as Iraqis threw rose petals. Now, similar uncritical thinking is being applied to Iran.
“A year ago,” the Washington Post’s editorialists wrote on Saturday, “a movement was born that offers the best chance of ending the threat posed by Iran’s support for terrorism and pursuit of nuclear weapons,” adding that:
“Mr. Obama’s strategy hasn’t slowed Iran’s nuclear program or its aggressions toward Iraq, Lebanon or Israel. The popular discontent reflected in the Green Movement offers another avenue for action, one that is more in keeping with America’s ideals. It’s time for the president to fully embrace it.”
Last Thursday, a New York Times editorial took a similar line, praising the new round of anti-Iran sanctions that the Obama administration pushed through the U.N. Security Council, though the Times said they “do not go far enough.”
The Times also took a mocking swipe at Brazil and Turkey, which voted against the new sanctions after having convinced Iran to swap about half its low-enriched uranium for more processed uranium that could only be used for peaceful purposes.
“The day’s most disturbing development was the two no votes in the Security Council from Turkey and Brazil,” the Times wrote. “Both are disappointed that their efforts to broker a nuclear deal with Iran didn’t go far. Like pretty much everyone else, they were played by Tehran.”
But the truth was that the Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal was torpedoed by the United States, although President Obama had privately encouraged it. Turkey and Brazil weren't "played by Tehran"; they were double-crossed by Washington.
Other Belligerent Voices
In recent weeks, Times star columnist Thomas L. Friedman also has weighed in with an influential column advocating U.S. backing for the Green Movement rather than further negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
The Green Movement’s “success — not any nuclear deal with the Iranian clerics — is the only sustainable source of security and stability. We have spent far too little time and energy nurturing that democratic trend and far too much chasing a nuclear deal,” Friedman wrote.
These moralistic “tough-guy” tones might sit well with armchair warriors like the Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt and the New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, but they appear likely to continue America’s stumbling progression toward another Middle East war.
And, as during the prelude to the Iraq War, the attitudes of the Post and Times editorialists are in sync with the warmongering of the neoconservatives. Regarding Iran, it is hard to distinguish between the opinions of the Post, the Times and, say, neocon propagandist Michael Ledeen writing recently in the Wall Street Journal.
So, over the past several weeks, it has become the collective judgment of key honchos from American journalism that the Obama administration should refuse to seek compromises regarding Iran’s nuclear program and instead push for “regime change.”
However, beyond the human consequences of such war-like policies, there’s the journalistic concern about these prestigious opinion leaders making up their own “reality.”
For instance, there’s the troublesome fact that virtually all the available evidence indicates that – contrary to Western hopes and desires – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the June 12, 2009, election in Iran and that his chief challenger Mousavi didn’t even come close.
As an analysis by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes discovered, not a single Iranian poll – whether before or after the election, whether conducted inside or outside Iran – showed Ahmadinejad with less than majority support. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Ahmadinejad Won, Get Over It!”]
However, the Post and Times seem determined to place their cherished myth of Mousavi’s victory at the center of U.S. foreign policy. Over the past year, whenever they mention the Iranian elections, the Post and Times characterize the vote as “disputed” or cite the opposition’s accusations that the results were “rigged” or “fraudulent.”
The Bush Exception
Though one might argue that such wording is fair given the controversy, it is worth noting that the two newspapers took the opposite approach toward the U.S. presidential election in 2000 when the evidence was overwhelming that George W. Bush stole the victory from Al Gore, who got more votes nationally and apparently got most of the legal votes in the key state of Florida.
Rather than forthrightly present the findings of a news media study which discovered Gore’s rightful Florida victory a year after the election, the editors of the Post and Times buried the startling result and instead highlighted hypothetical partial recounts that still left Bush ahead.
The editorial thinking – after the 9/11 attacks – apparently was that the truth would undermine Bush’s “legitimacy” amid the crisis and open the newspapers to accusations that they had undercut the patriotic unity that was then sweeping the country.
To enforce the "Bush-won" judgment, prominent commentators, such as the Post’s media writer Howard Kurtz, mocked anyone who bothered to read the recount study’s actual results and who dared notice the unacceptable outcome (Gore’s victory). Those who did became “conspiracy theorists.” [For details, see the book, Neck Deep.]
So, the major U.S. news media harps on what is essentially an unsupported conspiracy theory – that Ahmadinejad “stole” the Iranian election – while treating as a “conspiracy theory” the accurate recognition that Bush did steal the U.S. election. You can look far and wide for the Post and Times referring to Election 2000 as "disputed" or "rigged" without much success.
To make matters worse, the Times and Post editorialists now have elevated their mythology about Iran’s “fraudulent” election into the chief rationale for relying upon the Green Movement to facilitate “regime change” in Iran, despite recent evidence that the opposition is fizzling.
“As a formal political organization, the reform movement is dead,” reported Will Yong and Michael Slackman in a news story for Saturday’s Times that nevertheless carried the hopeful headline, “Across Iran, Anger Lies Behind Face of Calm.” (Given today’s economic dislocations, a similar headline could be applied to nearly every country on the planet, including the United States.)
Spiking Afghan Peace
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, as the U.S. and NATO casualty lists grow, the New York Times also is taking a hard line, publishing an editorial on Monday, condemning Afghan President Hamid Karzai for even exploring a possible peace deal with the Taliban.
As happened with Obama regarding his initial interest in engaging the Iranian government, Karzai is portrayed as foolish for thinking that a negotiated peace is possible for Afghanistan, at least not before U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal gets more time to pummel the Taliban.
Though acknowledging that McChrystal’s war escalation so far has met little success, the editorialists said his “counterinsurgency strategy still seems like the best chance to stabilize Afghanistan and get American troops home.”
As for Karzai’s peace overtures, the Times concluded: “We don’t know if the Taliban leaders will ever compromise. But we are sure that they will consider it only under duress. General McChrystal is going to have to do a much better job [in an upcoming offensive] in Kandahar. Mr. Karzai is going to have to drop his illusions and commit to the fight.”
It apparently is beyond the ken of the smart editorialists at the Post and Times that they may be the ones suffering from “illusions.”
--MORE"The NYT and the Flotilla Inquiry
Another Compromised Reporter
By ALISON WEIR – June 16, 2010
The New York Times, whose regional bureau chief has a son in the Israeli military, reports that Israel has just appointed a panel charged with investigating its attack on an aid flotilla that killed nine aid volunteers, including a 19-year-old American.
Isabel Kershner, who is an Israeli citizen and has refused to answer questions about her possible family ties to the Israeli military, writes the report.
Kershner reports that the White House hailed the announcement of the panel as an “important step forward,” stating that “the structure and terms of reference of Israel’s proposed independent public commission can meet the standard of a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation.”
In her story, Kershner reports that the panel will include eminent Irish Nobel Peace Laureate Lord David Trimble as an observer, but omits the fact that Trimble is a leader of the newly formed pro-Israel organization “Friends of Israel” and is close to Netanyahu associate Dore Gold.
Irish journalist Patrick Roberts writes, “This is a little like putting the fox in charge of the hen house.”
Kershner reports that the other foreign observer is Brig. Gen. Ken Watkins, former judge advocate general of Canadian Forces, but fails to mention that Watkins is known for stonewalling a 2009 House of Commons investigation into Afghan prisoner abuse.
One House of Commons member commented at the time about Watkins’ lack of cooperation with the investigation: “Obviously the cover-up continues.”
Kershner informs readers that the panel will be led by a retired Israeli Supreme Court Justice, but fails to mention reports that he does not believe in such a panel and opposed foreign participation.
Kershner reports in the bottom half of her story that Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper calls the proposed panel a “farce,” but does not mention that this is a longstanding pattern for Israeli governmental investigations (and lack thereof) into military human rights abuses. For example:
° From 2001 through 2006 the Israeli State Attorney’s office received more than 500 complaints about abuse of interrogees. There was not a single criminal investigation.
° In 2005 Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem released a report entitled “Israeli military grants impunity when soldiers kill Palestinian civilians,” finding that although Israeli soldiers had killed at least 1,694 Palestinian civilians, including 536 minors, only one soldier had been convicted of “causing the death of a Palestinian.”
° In 2009 eleven Israeli human rights organizations released a joint report in which they called on the Israeli government to “Stop whitewashing suspected crimes in Gaza.”
° In 2010 B’Tselem found that the Israeli military’s “cover-up of phosphorous shelling in Gaza proves army cannot investigate itself.” An Amnesty International report concurred in this conclusion, finding that Israel’s investigations into Cast Lead had not met “international standards of independence, impartiality, transparency, promptness and effectiveness.”
In her story Kershner reports Netanyahu’s allegation that the blockade “is necessary to prevent Hamas from smuggling in weapons or materials needed to make them, and to weaken Hamas control.” She goes on to acknowledge that “there is a growing consensus abroad that the blockade has taken a toll mainly on civilians,” but neglects to report the fact that Israeli closures of Gaza preceded the election of Hamas and that the “toll” is massive and calamitous.
She also fails to include any of the vast evidence for such a consensus, for example:
Nearly 99 percent of Gaza’s 4,000 fishermen are now considered either poor (making between $100 and $190 a month) or very poor (earning less than $100 a month); there are acute, sometimes lethal shortages of fuel, cash, cooking gas and other basic supplies; 98 percent of industrial operations have been shut down since 2007; and 3,500 families are still displaced from last year’s invasion due to Israel’s blockade on building materials.
Although the Israeli government has failed to investigate itself honestly and thoroughly through the years, a great many respected international human rights organizations from Christian Aid to the Red Cross have done so, documenting a pattern of widespread human rights abuses by the Israeli military.
In 2006 independent researchers Patrick O’Connor and Rachel Roberts found that since fall 2000:
“[T]hree of the leading human rights organizations focusing on Israel/Palestine – Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Israeli organization B’Tselem – published 76 reports focused primarily on Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights, and four reports primarily focused on Palestinians abuses of Israeli or Palestinian rights. This weighting suggests that Israel has committed a disproportionate share of the human rights violations.”
During this time, the New York Times published two news stories on reports documenting Israeli human rights abuses and two stories on reports documenting Palestinian human rights abuses.
In other words, in its “even-handed” style, the New York Times covered fifty percent of the reports on human rights abuses committed by Palestinians, while covering under three percent of those detailing human abuses perpetrated by Israelis.
--MORE--""US Media and Israel Military, All in the Family
By Alison Weir, Sabbah Report
[Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, which provides information and media analysis on Israel-Palestine]
Recent exposés revealing that Ethan Bronner, the New York Times Israel-Palestine bureau chief, has a son in the Israeli military have caused a storm of controversy that continues to swirl and generate further revelations.
Many people find such a sign of family partisanship in an editor covering a foreign conflict troubling especially given the Times’ record of Israel-centric journalism.
Times management at first refused to confirm Bronner’s situation, then refused to comment on it. Finally, public outcry forced Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt to confront the problem in a February 7th column.
After bending over backwards to praise the institution that employs him, Hoyt ultimately opined that Bronner should be re-assigned to a different sphere of reporting to avoid the “appearance” of bias. Times Editor Bill Keller declined to do so, however, instead writing a column calling Bronner’s connections to Israel valuable because they “supply a measure of sophistication about Israel and its adversaries that someone with no connections would lack.”
If such “sophistication” is valuable, the Times’ espoused commitment to the “impartiality and neutrality of the company’s newsrooms” would seem to require it to have a balancing editor equally sophisticated about Palestine and its adversary, but Keller did not address that.
Bronner is far from alone
As it turns out, Bronner’s ties to the Israeli military are not the rarity one might expect.
A previous Times bureau chief, Joel Greenberg, before he was bureau chief but after he was already publishing in the Times from Israel, actually served in the Israeli army.
Media pundit and Atlantic staffer Jeffrey Goldberg also served in the Israeli military; it’s unclear when, how, or even if his military service ended.
Richard Chesnoff, who has been covering Mideast events for more than 40 years, had a son serving in the Israeli military while Chesnoff covered Israel as US News & World Report’s senior foreign correspondent.
NPR’s Linda Gradstein’s husband was an Israeli sniper and may still be in the Israeli reserves. NPR refuses to disclose whether Gradstein herself is also an Israeli citizen, as are her children and husband.
Mitch Weinstock, national editor for the San Diego Union-Tribune, served in the Israeli military.
The New York Times’ other correspondent from the region, Isabel Kershner, is an Israeli citizen. Israel has universal compulsory military service, which suggests that Kershner herself and/or family members may have military connections. The Times refuses to answer questions about whether she and/or family members have served or are currently serving in the Israeli military. Is it possible that Times Foreign Editor Susan Chira herself has such connections? The Times refuses to answer.
Many Associated Press writers and editors are Israeli citizens or have Israeli families. AP will not reveal how many of the journalists in its control bureau for the region currently serve in the Israeli military, how many have served in the past, and how many have family members with this connection.
Similarly, many TV correspondents such as Martin Fletcher have been Israeli citizens and/or have Israeli families. Do they have family connections to the Israeli military?
Time Magazine’s bureau chief several years ago became an Israeli citizen after he had assumed his post. Does he have relatives in the military?
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, while not an Israeli citizen, was based in Israel for many years, wrote a book whitewashing Israeli spying on the US, and used to work for the Israel lobby in the US. None of this is divulged to CNN viewers.
Tikkun’s editor Michael Lerner has a son who served in the Israeli military. While Lerner has been a strong critic of many Israeli policies, in an interview with Jewish Week, Lerner explains:
“Having a son in the Israeli army was a manifestation of my love for Israel, and I assume that having a son in the Israeli army is a manifestation of Bronner’s love of Israel.”
Lerner goes on to make a fundamental point:
For a great many of the reporters and editors determining what Americans learn about Israel-Palestine, Israel is family.
Jonathan Cook, a British journalist based in Nazareth, writes of a recent meeting with a Jerusalem based bureau chief, who explained: “ Bronner’s situation is ‘the rule, not the exception. I can think of a dozen foreign bureau chiefs, responsible for covering both Israel and the Palestinians, who have served in the Israeli army, and another dozen who like Bronner have kids in the Israeli army.”
Cook writes that the bureau chief explained: “It is common to hear Western reporters boasting to one another about their Zionist credentials, their service in the Israeli army or the loyal service of their children.”
Apparently, intimate ties to Israel are among the many open secrets in the region that are hidden from the American public. If, as the news media insist, these ties present no problem or even, as the Times’ Keller insists, enhance the journalists’ work, why do the news agencies consistently refuse to admit them?
The reason for media obfuscation
The answer is not complicated.
While Israel may be family for these journalists and editors, for the vast majority of Americans, Israel is a foreign country. In survey after survey, Americans say they don’t wish to “take sides” on this conflict. In other words, the American public wants full, unfiltered, unslanted coverage.
Quite likely the news media refuse to answer questions about their journalists’ affiliations because they suspect, accurately, that the public would be displeased to learn that the reporters and editors charged with supplying news on a foreign nation and conflict are, in fact, partisans.
While Keller claims that the New York Times is covering this conflict “even-handedly,” studies indicate otherwise:
The Times covers international reports documenting Israeli human rights abuses at a rate 19 times lower than it reports on the far smaller number of international reports documenting Palestinian human rights abuses.
The Times covers Israeli children’s deaths at rates seven times greater than they cover Palestinian children’s deaths, even though there are vastly more of the latter and they occurred first.
The Times fails to inform its readers that Israel’s Jewish-only colonies on confiscated Palestinian Christian and Muslim land are illegal; that its collective punishment of 1.5 million men, women, and children in Gaza is not only cruel and ruthless, it is also illegal; and that its use of American weaponry is routinely in violation of American laws.
The Times covers the one Israeli (a soldier) held by Palestinians at a rate incalculably higher than it reports on the Palestinian men, women, and children the vast majority civilians imprisoned by Israel (currently over 7,000).
The Times neglects to report that hundreds of Israel’s captives have never even been charged with a crime and that those who have were tried in Israeli military courts under an array of bizarre military statutes that make even the planting of onions without a permit a criminal offense a legal system, if one can call it that, that changes at the whim of the current military governor ruling over a subject population; a system in which parents are without power to protect their children.
The Times fails to inform its readers that 40 percent of Palestinian males have been imprisoned by Israel, a statistic that normally would be considered highly newsworthy, but that Bronner, Kershner, and Chira apparently feel is unimportant to report.
Americans, whose elected representatives give Israel uniquely gargantuan sums of our tax money (a situation also not covered by the media), want and need all the facts, not just those that Israel’s family members decree reportable.
We’re not getting them.
--MORE--"" When you suck up to just 2% of the population, the other 98% are going to leave! And the New York Times wonders why their readership continues to decline. " -- Wake the Flock Up
That is why I stopped reading them over three years ago -- and now it is the Boston Globe's turn.
Flotilla Cover-up by the New York Times for Israel
by on June 21, 2010
The alternative media is working diligently to locate evidence that the New York Times willfully aided Israel’s cover-up of information about their flotilla attack.
Prima facie evidence of the paper’s distortion and suppression of facts is so abundant we believe top management must have been involved.
The Times’ complicity ranged from journalistic failure to follow leads that might (and did) contradict Israel’s version of the massacre, to serving as an unabashed conduit for Israeli propaganda. The Times persisted in publishing and republishing the official line of Israel and became a virtual bulletin board for crackpot opinions and commentary that called the humanitarian flotilla “an act of aggression” that threatened the survival of the nation of Israel.
Bloggers like Philip Weiss (Mondoweiss), FAIR, and yours truly (USMediaAndIsrael.com) provide examples of the Times’ stonewalling and disinformation. James North on Mondoweiss, for example, writes about the aftermath of Israel’s illegal detainment of hundreds of peace activists and their video evidence. As Israel began releasing the prisoners, the Times‘ legion of reporters failed to interview a single flotilla member to get their version of the atrocity. As North wrote, this unconscionable delay gave “Israel’s version of the deadly raid time to harden.”
When the Times finally did report something not fed to them by Israel, their front page story lamented the public relations catastrophe for Israel, not the murder of nine peace activists nor the immense suffering caused by the illegal siege of Gaza.
The NY Times has a long history of pro-Israel reporting of events in the Middle East. One notable illustration is their coverage of Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty that killed and wounded over 200 American sailors. The Times‘ only account of this deliberate, hour-long assault — a brief summary buried on page 19 of the paper.
The question is who within the New York Times ordered the most recent journalistic stonewalling and kowtowing to Israeli interests. Might it be publisher/owner Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.? Rank-and-file employees and journalists at the Times must be truly embarrassed, even shamed by the actions and inactions of their employer.
We of the alternative media ask someone to come forward.
MOREThe Pinnacle of PropagandaHow Israeli propaganda shaped U.S. media coverage of the flotilla attack
Operation Mockingbird
