Washington Post Editor Dubs Harassed Jewish Students “Radical”
In his most recent column in the Jewish Advocate (Jan. 4, “Cover up at the Post”), David Project president Charles Jacobs notes that an editor at the Washington Post decided to brand as “radicals” the Jewish students who felt compelled to speak out about harassment and intimidation by Columbia University professors:
[Joseph] Massad … is famous for being accused in the David Project’s film, “Columbia Unbecoming,” as a harasser of pro-Israel students inside his classroom. One student testified that he told her, “If you deny Israeli atrocities, get out of my class.” Columbia’s own investigation reprimanded him for that.
… [The Washington Post] discredited the students by reporting that “the school was rocked by accusations from a group of radical Jewish students of intimidation by Middle East language professors.” But these students were anything but “radical.” The only thing “radical” about them was that they decided they had had enough of Massad’s bullying.
I wrote a letter to the editor explaining that “as anyone who viewed the film would know, the students were .. soft-spoken, articulate centrists and progressives who wanted to protect their own free speech in classrooms where only Arabist viewpoints were taught, valued or permitted.”
(It turned out that a Post editor inserted the word “radical” in the story — without telling the writer.”)
The Post didn’t run Jacobs’s letter, but it did decide to run the following correction:
“A Dec. 16 A-section article on divisions at Columbia University incorrectly characterized as radical a group of Jewish students who had alleged intimidation by Middle East language professors.”
More from SNAPSHOTS
Mahmoud Abbas’ Diatribe Threatening Israel Included Bogus Canaanite Claim
September 10, 2019
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ recent anti-Israel diatribe that aired on PA TV was monitored and translated by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Excerpt: "I say to [Israel]: Every stone you have built on our land [...]
CNN Calls House’s Unifying Anti-BDS Vote ‘Divisive’
July 24, 2019
Yesterday, in an overwhelming vote of bipartisan support, the House of Representatives voted 398 to 17 to adopt a resolution opposing the anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divest, sanctions) campaign. Yet, CNN's headline casts the unifying vote [...]
NY Times Cites Poll, Hides Palestinian Support for Violence
July 9, 2019
The New York Times has struggled to accurately describe polls this year. In January, editor Jonathan Weisman misrepresented Pew polling data to describe a nonexistent surge in Israeli support for the United States under President [...]
CNN’s Zakaria Indulges Palestinian Propagandist Hanan Ashrawi
June 9, 2019
Fareed Zakaria’s weekly Cable News Network (CNN) program (grandiosely named “Global Public Square”) June 9 broadcast included a discussion of the current U.S. Middle East peace plan with guests Hanan Ashrawi (Palestinian Authority official) and [...]
In Robert Bernstein Obit, AFP Inappropriately References His Judaism
May 29, 2019
Robert Bernstein (Courtesy the New Press) In its obituary yesterday for American publisher Robert Bernstein, Agence France Presse inserted an inappropriate reference to the Human Rights Watch founder who later turned on the organization due [...]