More on The New York Times and Haredi Photoshop

Yesterday we discussed Jodi Rudoren’s article about a Haredi Jewish newspaper that photoshopped, awkwardly and with potential to offend, images of women from a photo of world leaders in Paris. Our blog post focused mostly on how Rudoren’s piece fit into a well-established pattern at the New York Times of obsessing over Israeli-Jewish flaws, real and imagined, in a way glaringly disproportionate to how the newspaper deals with most other groups (even Americans).

Last night, Rudoren posted an update on her Facebook page, which reaches only a small fraction of her New York Times readership. The update included noteworthy information that contradicts some of the allegations in the original story, and also prompted a discussion in which some interesting points were raised, including by professors of journalism.

First, the noteworthy added information: The Times published the piece before it was able to get comment from anyone at the Israeli newspaper—and readers lost out. Although Rudoren’s article charged the Israeli paper with “denying the fact that in the wider world, beyond the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, women do stand on the world stage and shape events” and with “tr[ying] to make it appear as though no women had been there to begin with,” that newspaper’s editor later told The Times that, in fact, his front-page story about the Paris march “listed Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany among those who led it.” Is that, to Western sensibilities, exculpatory? Maybe not. Is it relevant to the discussion? Definitely. But missing from The New York Times story.

Now to some of the comments left on Rudoren’s Facebook page:

Journalist and journalism professor David Greenberg raised the question of whether the behavior scrutinized in Rudoren’s article is any different than policy about not showing images of Mohammed imposed by New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet:

Jodi, The editor’s argument is that running a woman’s image would offend his audience’s religious beliefs. Isn’t this the exact same argument as Dean Baquet’s for not running Muhammad’s image? (I’m not asking you to defend his policy!)

To which another Facebook user replied:

Yes, David. It is the same idea except that he is not doing it because it would offend his non-readers, he is doing it to avoid offending his readers so that they will buy the newspaper. And his readers are not telling the NYTimes or anyone else that they may not publish the photos. So it really isn’t the same thing at all.

Rudoren argued that the difference between her employer and the religious newspaper is that The Times chooses not to publish images of Mohammed, while the newspaper she wrote about published the photo but surreptitiously edited it. Greenberg agreed, but added that “both editors are wrongly catering to religious sensitivities at the expense of important news.”

Another professor of journalism, Ira Rifkin, raised doubts about the newsworthiness of Rudoren’s piece:

Move along, move along. Nothing NEW going on here. Why is this even a story — again? Removing women from photos in Haredi publications is so common place that it should have ceased to be news long ago. This is what it’s readership wants and expects. Just because it seems sexist and dishonest to non-Haredi readers does not make it a story worth repeating time and again.

A CAMERA researcher asked Rudoren about her views on the the story and her update:

Two questions I hope you might be able to answer, Jodi.

First, do you think your Facebook post, which of course doesn’t have nearly the same circulation as your initial article, is good enough?

Here’s what I mean: In a piece that refers to the photoshopping largely in terms of prompting “snickers” and “satire,” of being a “sin,” of causing “embarass[ment]” (twice), and of amounting to “religious extremism” that’s analogous even to murder, was your one cryptic quote by a haredi woman at the end enough? If you couldn’t immediately get in touch with anyone at HaMevaser, should you have waited a day?

Because honestly, the information you share above — that their the front page story in fact noted that Angela Merkel led the march — seems to be not only an important counterpoint to Sommer’s charge that the newspaper is ” denying…women…stand on the world stage” and your charge that they “tried to make it appear as though no women had been there to begin with,” but an essential counterpoint.

Second, can you help me understand why (and correct me if I’m wrong) your newspaper didn’t cover Ikea’s removal of all women from the Saudi version of its catalog? Ikea, a huge, hip multi-billion-dollar organization, is no less important than this small newspaper serving a small population, is it? Do you accept the “Jews are news” axiom as a legitimate excuse to disproportionately focus on Jews—most often, (Israeli) Jews behaving strangely or (Israeli) Jews behaving badly—relative to Ikea or Saudis or Jordanians or Palestinians? Or is it an axiom that describes a problem, one that should be fixed?