"Israel: Anti-Pope Image on Web Site"
By Ethan Bronner
Published October 21, 2008 - Section A10
Despite its brevity, Tuesday's blurb in the Times speaks a lot about a troubling pattern: consistently reporting barely newsworthy stories that shed a negative light on Israel, while barely reporting newsworthy stories that shed a negative light on the Palestinian Authority.
Attempting to define "newsworthy," one can reasonably argue that it is an event which impacts people's lives, or a government, or international relations; or an event which reflects a pattern of relevant behavior. Ethan Bronner's "Israel: Anti-Pope Image on Web Site," appears to be none of the above.
The website of note, Yalla Kadima, is not an official Kadima site, but considered pro-Kadima, run by its supporters. It posted a picture of Pope Benedict XVI with a swastika superimposed on his face.
Bronner reports that the site said the image was "sent by descendants of Holocaust survivors," and was a "legitimate form of protest against attempts by the Vatican to beatify Pope Pius XII, the pope during World War II, who has been criticized for not speaking out against Nazi genocide." Bronner then relates that party leader Tzipi Livni asked the site to take the picture down.
If Bronner, as most correspondents in Israel, scours the Israeli papers for stories on which to report, he would weekly find stories on senior elements of the Palestinian Authority encouraging rejection of Israel, often through violence, as well as promoting the right of return and other positions antithetical to peace. Earlier this year, for example, Israeli papers were buzzing about Mahmoud Abbas' interviews in which he both kept open the possibility of armed struggle against Israel and rejected the notion of Israel as a Jewish state. Bronner and the Times were silent on these relevant stories. There was no hard-hitting analysis on how these positions of Abbas -- reportedly the most moderate of Palestinians -- will reconcile his people to peace with Israel. There wasn't even a blurb in the Times. Why the double standard?
Surely Israel-Vatican relations warrants coverage, but it is questionable if the actions of a truly rogue and isolated element within the ruling party -- especially after swift action was taken by the party -- has any bearing on those relations.
When a paper with the global reach of the Times reports on something so insignificant, it makes it significant. The finer details of the blurb will be lost and all that likely will be remembered is that Israel's ruling party tars the pope as a Nazi. If that is what happened, then the New York Times is obligated to report it. Nothing of the sort happened, and the Times should've be more responsible by not reporting this non-story.
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Well done in explaining why this story should not be deemed "newsworthy." It is practically an insult to the readers intelligence that such an article, albeit a blurb, was printed in the first place.
ReplyDeleteAnd it isn't that the NYT simply fails to shed a truth-based negative light on the PA, this also applies to more nefarious segments of Palestinians such as Hamas.
The "root cause" of poverty and oppression is the result of violent Palestinian behavior and hostile rhetoric. So why report on the "illness" when what the reader really needs to understand is the "symptoms" ?
Maybe we should look for the root cause of "racism" and designate it as a psychological illness. How many people would go for that?
I wonder how many extra hits "Yalla Kadima" received from the magnification of this silly event? That is probably the greatest impact of this article.