Values of classical journalism

via memeorandum

I wanted to believe the worst of the Obama campaign. I wanted to believe that they had released the note that the candidate had place in the Kotel (Western Wall) to two newspapers.

There was some indication that the paper making the claim, Ma’ariv was being honest.

Not anymore.

The New Republic’s blog that had previously accepted Ma’ariv’s story, has dug a little deeper and found:

I just got off the phone with a Ma’ariv spokesman who says that the accusation is “completely false,” and that he has no idea who these papers were quoting from Ma’ariv. “No official spokesman for Ma’ariv told this to any of the papers.” I’ve got some calls in to these papers to find out where they got the quote. (I’ll update here when I hear back.) He told me definitively that “the Obama campaign did not give us a copy of the letter or approve it for printing.”

Hot Air writes:

Something’s fishy with Ma’ariv, though. TNR notes that unnamed “spokesmen” pushing the “Obama approved it” line were quoted by three different Israeli papers last night. And today?

Last October Ehud Asheri wrote in Haaretz:

Ofer Nimrodi, owner of the mass-circulation daily newspaper Ma’ariv, has been experiencing something unfamiliar these days: rare esteem and praise is greeting the appointment of the editors-in-chief Doron Galezer and Ruthie Yuval, the likes of which the battered publisher has never enjoyed.

Fifteen years after he bought the newspaper, there appears at long last the possibility that he will be extricated from his outsider position in print journalism and will earn equal status in the exclusive club of the veteran publishers who, unlike him, were born into the industry.

The change in the way the wind is blowing can be attributed first of all to what Galezer and Yuval represent: traditional, independent, investigative journalism that is not linked by umbilical cord to wealth, does not habitually hobnob socially with politicians in the places they frequent, and is not tainted by obsequious populism.

Both of them grew up in the solid school of the Haaretz group, and both have proven that it is possible to maintain the values of classical journalism even in the commercial environment of the mass circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth, and television’s Channel 2.

Those “values of classical journalism” were on full display during the recent controversy over Sen. Obama’s note in the wall.

I’m sorry I fell for it.

See also Rubicon3.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.