Why Does a NY Times Journalist Want to Suppress an Anti-Hamas Article?
A New York Times journalist thinks the Wall Street Journal shouldn’t have published an opinion piece criticizing Hamas’s anti-Israel propaganda campaign. The reporter, Declan Walsh, is one of the Times reporters who has covered the recent clashes along the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel.
The first to suggest the article should have been spiked was Gregg Carlstrom, a correspondent for The Economist:
Why do newspapers give Israeli mouthpieces space to accuse journalists (including their own!) of being naive, incompetent apologists for terror? https://t.co/PIYieXDmac
— Gregg Carlstrom (@glcarlstrom) May 21, 2018
Walsh concurred. “Fair question,” he responded on Twitter.
Fair question https://t.co/CUC4dZpFfT
— Declan Walsh (@declanwalsh) May 21, 2018
What arguments does the Wall Street Journal piece make that are so egregious, so beyond the pale, that they prompted these two journalists to wish editors had suppressed it? And what exactly did the author of the Op-Ed, an Israeli army spokesman, say about journalists being “naive, incompetent apologists for terror”?
In fact, the piece was almost entirely focused on Hamas, its goals, and its propaganda. It charged Hamas leaders with lying when describing the Gaza demonstrations they organized as a “peaceful protest,” and lamented that “much of the world simply fell for it.” And it said that “some in the media helped Hamas by publishing its lies rather than facts.”
And …that’s all.
The irony is striking. Carlstrom and Walsh are criticizing journalists — in this case Wall Street Journal opinion editors — because they seem to believe criticizing journalists should be taboo. How to make sense of the self-contradiction in their call for self-censorship?
In the case of the New York Times writer, Declan Walsh, it could be that the criticism in the Journal piece struck a bit too close to home. Walsh is one of the New York Times reporters who’ve counted Hamas gunmen that opened fire on Israelis, and Palestinians planting explosives, as supposed “protesters” killed by Israel.
So criticism of Wall Street Journal opinion editors is okay. But criticism of “some journalists” — maybe, for example, journalists who outrageously count gunmen as protesters? — is, conveniently out of bounds according to Carlson and Walsh.
You can read the piece the reporters wanted suppressed by clicking here.
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