By GARY BAUMGARTEN
Paltalk News Network
The public editor at the New York Times is recommending that the paper's Jerusalem bureau chief be reassigned because his son is now in the Israeli army. How can the father be objective, the editor asks, with a son in harm's way? I understand the concern, but where does one draw the line?
It's not unusual for editors and assignment desks to send black reporters out to cover the African American community. Hispanics to cover Latinos. Arabs to cover Arabs. And Jews to cover Jews. The theory is that they have a better understanding and probably have greater access to those communities. But how objective then, based on the public editor's recommendation, are these reporters?
What about women reporters covering women's issues? Ex-jocks covering sports?
Handicapped reporters covering the disabled? It sounds a bit absurd, but it's a fair question, if you follow the logic offered by Times public editor Clark Hoyt.
What about the time-honored tradition of using indigenous reporters to cover events in other lands? Should Iraqis be precluded from reporting from Iraq? Afghans from Afghanistan? Iranians from Iran?
Doesn't it really come down to the integrity of the reporter? Presumably, Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner has strong feelings about the positions the Israelis take on issues that he is covering. His job is to put those feelings aside and be objective. Does that suddenly end when his son joins the IDF?
To be fair, Hoyt is not questioning Bronner's objectivity. He's raising questions about perceptions. But perhaps he's creating the perceptions himself. (It should be noted that the pro-Palestinian Electronic Intifada site was first to raise the issue.)
During the Vietnam War, when the draft was in place, I'm sure there were reporters whose sons were called to serve. Were there calls for them to stop writing about the war? I don't recall that there were.
Either the people you hire are objective or they are not. If they are, they use their personal experiences to enhance their reporting. They draw upon them to ask insightful questions.
Hoyt says he isn't calling into question Bronner's integrity here. But, sadly, because of this suggestion, his integrity is being questioned. Questioned without foundation.
That's the kind of sloppy reporting that, as the newspaper's ombudsman, Hoyt is supposed to be guarding against.
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Comments
There are lines and they do have to be drawn. What would we think of the business reporting of a journalist whose wife or husband ran the company being reported on? The reporter could protest as much as they liked that they were being objective, but we wouldn't believe them.
In certain contexts, e.g. jury selection, natural biases are considered disqualifying.
However, here we are dealing with journalists an essential part of the professional training of which teaches isolation from such prejudices. In my opinion, the reassignment in question is an unfair prejudgment that the training was ineffective.
I think that plays into fears of dual loyalty for Jews, which is not fair, because frankly, I have never met an Irishman who liked the British as much as average, or an Armenian who could accept Great Power arguments about U.S. Turkish relations, and the Taiwanese here ... the list is endless.
Now, if he stops reporting on the carnage, and that is what it is, carnage is Gaza, then that is a problem, just like it would be a problem if someone as a reporter failed to point out the long history of Hamas of violating the rules of war in terms of placing military targets in close proximity to civilians, which is deliberately designed to make the Israelis look bad and, and alienate Palestinians against them, but no, I don't think that is fair.
Which pretty much points out the unfairness of the suggesting that he be reposted.
Second, if Bronner is bureau chief, I have to assume he's more an editor than a reporter (although newsroom cutbacks may have made that distinction a thing of the past).
If no one is complaining of bias except a pro-Palestinian web site, and especially if no one in the bureau or The Times management has any documented reason to doubt Bronner's integrity, then they should stand by the guy. I'm not sure all your parallel situations apply, but I do very strongly agree that a reporter's or editor's integrity is the critical issue here. Perception is important, yes, but it can't be the ultimate determinant. I presume his superiors know and trust Bronner's work - including his ability to dispassionately report, assign and edit the news -- and if they haven't found him lacking, they should stand by him, whatever The Times's Public Editor says.
I'm complaining Jeremiah, and I certainly don't fit the description you mentioned. That said, for years standard news reporting phrased all news reporting with the following stock descriptions: "Palestine terrorist" and "Israeli freedom fighter."
Get the picture?
I met a young reporter named Peter Jennings at a demonstration I had helped to organize. I kept interrupting his conversation with his producer, correcting their mistaken impressions about what was going on, why we were demonstrating, and what we hoped to accomplish.
I had no idea who Jennings was, but he took enough of a liking to me to offer me a job as a campus stringer, if I could get past an interview with Frank Reynolds, the current anchor man on ABC news.
Reynolds, a World War II marine, was in personal torment at the time because his own son had resigned his commission in the Marines and gone over to the other side.
Reynolds could not understand how patriotic Americans could organize against the war in Vietnam, and wanted me around to serve as a sounding board because he knew that he had a certain kind of myopia about the war and the anti-war effort.
That was a good reporter being a good reporter regardless of the personal associations with a story.
Reporters are not supposed to have political leanings. They are supposed to report what has happened. Editors are supposed to filter out partisan representations from news stories.
Today, however, we have so fully engaged the concept of partisan reporting that the entire concept of the impartial observer has been forgotten ....and we are the worse for that.
I repeat the example I used earlier - could you assign a reporter to report on a business that his/her spouse runs? Could you assign a reporter to report on a politician who happened to be his or her partner? No.
In the good old days, business reporters weren't even supposed to own shares. Once you have skin in the game, you've got a conflict of interest, pure and simple. Even if you can remain pure and objective despite that, you've invited your readers to mistrust you.
Bronner's son is not running the war. Nor is he a politician making policy decisions for the state of Israel. He is merely a soldier.
Would you then preclude all Israelis from becoming journalists in that nation because of its mandatory military service?
The role of the foreign correspondent is different - it's to provide an outsider's point of view, and to pose questions on behalf of the American public. Once the reporter gets caught up in local issues in a serious way - and having a child serving in the military is as serious as it gets - there is a clear conflict of interest.
Should a citizen of a country reporting from his or her homeland for an American media outlet then be required to disclose this fact in all of his or her dispatches?
I would have asked for a transfer were I in this guy's shoes. Perception is reality, and although I understand how important it is to stay with your beat, there are moments when it's just not smart. My Spousal Unit's a police officer in our county. I don't cover events relating to the police in the county. Period.
I'm hoping you're not insinuating that my comments are dictated by my employer. I assure you they are not! I'm in the enviable position of having probably the least interference upon my work than at any other company I've worked for. That may have positive outcomes. Perhaps, not always, but that's how it works here.
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I want to thank you for providing readers a sampling of the personal relationships that result in bias I was talking about. You immediately jumped to a negative conclusion...stated in your response, which exactly made. Thank you. Lesson over.
So, my dear reader and commentator, YOUR lesson is now over!
It stands, in fact it nails it to the wall. You start by setting up a straw man to knock down. Then you throw in mindless assertions,
"During the Vietnam War, when the draft was in place, I'm sure there were reporters whose sons were called to serve."
Shows how little you know about the Vietnam era draft. Thier sons were in college or in the seminary or got deferments like Dick Cheney.
No, it does not come down to the integrity of the reporter. Would you put your money in a bank that just trusted to the integrity of the tellers. Somebody is supposed to be in charge and that person is the editor he or she can be fired for a reporters failings.
"Hoyt says he isn't calling into question Bronner's integrity here. But, sadly, because of this suggestion, his integrity is being questioned. Questioned without foundation."
What? You create an argument out of thin air and then use it to conclude that it must be sadly true.
And you want to talk about sloppy reporting?
You make certain assumptions based on facts not in evidence.
You assume I lack an understanding of the Vietnam era draft. It's an assumption you should not be making. I was of draft age during the Vietnam era. I reported extensively about the war and covered the anti-war movement as a young reporter.
You also assume that all the reporters sons were deferred. You don't know this, but you state it as fact.
And then you accuse me of sloppy reporting!
"Israeli freedom fighter." I've never seen any reporter, certainly not in the NYT, use such a formula. I think you made it up.
Source, please?