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April 09, 2014

Where's the Coverage? NY Times Wrong on Hitler, Wrong to this Day

If you have noticed that the New York Times news pages are slanted against Israel, you have probably also noticed the predominantly anti-Israel voices given a platform on the editorial pages. CAMERA has. CAMERA is undertaking a campaign to inform the public about The Times’ anti-Israel bias and how the newspaper omits key information and misrepresents facts.

Unfortunately, The New York Times has been wrong for decades. On December 20, 1924, the newspaper ran this article:

It goes without saying that Hitler was absolutely not “tamed by prison.�? However, Times readers did not get a full picture of how wrong this assessment was because, as historian Laurel Leff proved in her book, “Buried by The Times,�? the newspaper downplayed the horrors of the Holocaust by printing stories on little-read back pages, running items without headlines and burying key facts within larger articles. Failing to give proper weight to arguably the most important news story of the twentieth century is clearly wrong.

And Times wrongness continues to this day. CAMERA’s six-month study of The New York Times details how the newspaper treats Israel with a harsher standard, omits context, and shows a clear preference for the Palestinian narrative. As for the opinion pages, The New York Observer recently ran a story quoting current and former Times reporters savaging the pundits, particularly Tom Friedman:

…One current Times staffer said, “It really isn’t about politics, because I land more to the left than I do to the right. I just find it …�?

He paused for a long time before continuing and then, unprompted, returned to Mr. Friedman. “I just think it’s bad, and nobody is acknowledging that they suck, but everybody in the newsroom knows it, and we really are embarrassed by what goes on with Friedman. I mean anybody who knows anything about most of what he’s writing about understands that he’s, like, literally mailing it in from wherever he is on the globe. He’s a travel reporter. A joke. The guy gets $75,000 for speeches and probably charges the paper for his first-class airfare.�?

Another former Times writer, someone who has gone on to great success elsewhere, expressed similar contempt (and even used the word “embarrass�?) and says it’s longstanding.

“I think the editorials are viewed by most reporters as largely irrelevant, and there’s not a lot of respect for the editorial page. The editorials are dull, and that’s a cardinal sin. They aren’t getting any less dull. As for the columnists, Friedman is the worst. He hasn’t had an original thought in 20 years; he’s an embarrassment. He’s perceived as an idiot who has been wrong about every major issue for 20 years…�?

If you read Friedman’s column on Sunday you know that some things never change. The Times was wrong on Hitler and is wrong today on Israel. As for a balanced and contextual assessment of Israel-related issues, in The New York Times… Where’s the coverage?

You can watch a lecture by Laurel Leff by clicking here or watch a shorter presentation by Hunter College High School student Anna Blech:

Posted by SC at April 9, 2014 09:11 PM

Comments

Posted by: Kenneth Perlman at April 10, 2014 10:28 AM

Posted by: Barry Rosen at April 10, 2014 06:33 PM

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