Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, responded last week on the newspaper’s Web site to similar complaints. She said the paper is scrupulously careful to describe the motives, histories, politics and perspectives of everyone in the conflict, allowing readers to decide who is right or wrong. “I see a backwards vote of confidence in The Times’s reporting, given that every identifiable faction in this fractured collision of peoples and injustices believes so firmly that we are taking a side — someone else’s,” Abramson said.

It can be risky for editors and reporters to think that if everyone in a dispute is angry with them, then they must be doing something right. Sometimes they are so wrong the anger is justified. But in the case of the complex, intractable struggle between Israel and the Palestinians, even the best, most evenhanded reporting will not satisfy those passionately on one side or the other.

Here are some of the particulars.

Bert Distelburger of New City, N.Y., said he suspected that a front-page picture last Monday of a dead Palestinian girl being carried on a stretcher in a Gaza City hospital was a faked “propaganda photo” because, “A doctor does not examine a person face down.” Patrick Witty, the photo editor who recommended the picture, showed me how he blew it up on a large computer screen and scanned it carefully for any signs of digital doctoring. “This is a real photograph,” he said. He also showed me obvious propaganda photos from both sides that he said he would never put in the newspaper — posed pictures of Palestinians looking at bodies or Israel’s prime minister visiting a smiling soldier in a hospital.

I don’t think that Mr. Distelburger was claiming that the photo was faked, but that it was staged. These are obviously both forms of fauxtography, but showing that it wasn’t one form doesn’t prove that it wasn’t a different form.

And then there’s this:

Witty and his colleagues are frustrated because Israel has barred journalists from entering Gaza, and although The Times has two photographers in the region ready to go, it must rely on pictures taken by Palestinian photographers. “When I can’t have my own person there, I have to question every picture that comes in — to an obsessive degree,” he said. Last summer, Witty unmasked as a fake a photo of an Iranian missile test that ran on many other front pages.

OK, Mr. Hoyt, your job is to correct mistakes not perpetuate them. I understand, some of what you do could be called “subjective.” But Mr. Witty did not unmask the fake photo. Maybe Mr. Witty was the person who noticed it in house, after the Times had already published it, LGF discovered the fraud regardless of what the Lede wrote. Newsbusters has the details.

Hoyt, admits that the Times does publish more photos of Palestinian suffering than of Israeli suffering.

My assistant, Michael McElroy, did such a count, from the start of the latest fighting through Friday, and found that online and in the newspaper, there were almost three photos from Gaza showing the impact of the war for every photo from Israel. There were 28 photos, some quite graphic, of dead and wounded Palestinians, five of Israelis. Such a ratio offends supporters of Israel, who argue that Hamas uses civilians as human shields and that the pictures inflame people against Israel.

Now that’s weaselly. Hamas does use civilians as human shields. It’s been shown and even the NYT has reported it. More to the point the Times does not sufficiently lay out that Hamas’s tactic of storing munitions, hiding fighters and building headquarters in civilian areas are all war crimes. Maybe it would be defensible to leave out the context of international law, except Hoyt claims in this very same column paraphrases editor Jill Abramson,

She said the paper is scrupulously careful to describe the motives, histories, politics and perspectives of everyone in the conflict, allowing readers to decide who is right or wrong.

Readers cannot draw conclusions if they don’t have all the facts. The Times by not mentioning that Hamas’s activities violate international law is not giving their readers adequate information to make the proper judgment. Rather it is holding back information that condemns Hamas by its actions.

Compounding this, is the way the use of the term “occupation” in the NYT’s reporting from the region. By describing the presence of Israelis living in Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem as living in “occupied territory,” the NYT is accepting a questionable interpretation at odds with historical usage, but compatible with the Palesitnian narrative. How can the Times claim use a dubious interpretation of international law when it comes time to question Israel, but ignore an obvious application of international when it would condemn Hamas? Is a democratic country allowed at least the same presumption of innocence as a terrorist group?

Hoyt also discusses casualties.

The newspaper ran a correction last Monday, saying that for the first three days of the conflict, it should have said more than 60 civilians were killed, not “some 60.” United Nations officials had counted 62 dead women and children but had no count of civilian men, because it is hard to tell them from Hamas fighters who do not wear uniforms.

If reporting is supposed to give us a sufficient background to make judgments, why does Hoyt consider UN officials as credible arbiters of casualties. The UNRWA has a long shameful history of anti-Israel activities, if not outright cooperation with Hamas. And it’s not like its record has been any better in the past couple of weeks.

Of course there’s something else disturbing about the above paragraph, where Hoyt observes nonchalantly what every pro-truth critic of the Times emphasizes: that Hamas “fighters” don’t wear uniforms. That observation sets off no alarm bells for Hoyt, the astute defender of the NYT’s credibility. If you need any other proof that Hamas, not only is dedicated to Israel’s destruction, that targets civilians, that it wishes to impose Shari’a, but that it operates in violation of international law that’s it. And it’s cited by UN officials who are apparently trying to maximize the outrage the world is supposed to feel towards Israel. Of course it’s hard to separate the civilians from the terrorists when the terrorists don’t observe the conventions of war.

One last observation about Hoyt. A few months ago those of us who oppose terrorism were outraged when the NYT gave op-ed space to Ahmed Yousef a spokesterrorist for Hamas. Hoyt dishonestly argued that there was a need to present Hamas’s view, because there’s a danger of one-sided debate.

How does he explain this past Thursday when the Times oped page was graced with four anti-Israel opinion pieces.
Why would that be, there weren’t any pro-Israel writers willing to contribute their thoughts? Or is the Times only concerned when terrorists don’t get their voices heard?

Hoyt had a chance to explain how the Times makes its decisions in its coverage of the Middle East. Instead he relied on platitudes, gave credit to his paper that it didn’t deserve, and confirmed that he shares the same biases that the papers reporters and editors have.

But this isn’t 1979, 1989 or even 1999. It’s 2009 when the reading public has access to resources and critical thinking abilities to challenge dishonestly presented news reports. Hoyt is pretending that reports in the NYT are the undisputed truth. They are but the first draft of propaganda and there are many people out there who are capable of challenging them effectively.

Finally, a piece of free advice for Mr. Hoyt. Hell hath no fury like a blogger scorned. If you’re going to ignore an amateur pajama-clad blogger that caught an error that your layers of professional editors missed, do so at your own peril. You will only earn much deserved scorn.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Elder of Ziyon, though, finds the standard of former Israel correspondent, James Bennett

The memo said he settled on a rough rule: He would use the words, when they fit, to describe attacks within Israelâ€s 1948 borders but not in the occupied West Bank or Gaza, which Israel and the Palestinians have been contending over since Israel took them in 1967. When a gunman infiltrated a settlement and killed a 5-year-old girl in her bed, Bennet did not call it terrorism. “All I could do was default to my first approach and describe the attack and the victims as vividly as I could.”

troubling.

In this way, the New York Times didn’t even meet the standards of Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, two organizations that decry terror, but find every Israeli response to be too much. Amnesty International writes:

Palestinians are also prohibited from targeting Israeli civilians, including settlers who are not bearing arms, and civilian objects.

Human Rights Watch is even clearer (.pdf)

Finally, Palestinian groups have argued that Israeli settlers in the West Bank, by virtue of their presence in an occupied territory, are not civilians, and that because many Israeli adults are members of the military reserve, they, too, are legitimate military targets. These claims also run counter to international humanitarian law. Even though Israelâ€s policy of maintaining and expanding civilian settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is illegal under international humanitarian law, a person who resides in an illegal settlement continues to be a civilian unless he or she directly participates in hostilities. Except in those circumstances of direct participation in armed conflict, these residents are entitled to full protection as civilians. Similarly, international humanitarian law leaves no doubt that reserve members of military or security forces, while not on active duty, are not combatants and thus benefit from protection as civilians.

I think it’s safe to call both AI and HRW anti-Israel, yet even they acknowledge that targeting Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria is illegal (and by definition – whether they say it or not – is terrorism.) Yet at least one reporter for the New York Times is of the opinion that if Jews living in Judea or Samaria are attacked, they have it coming to them.

Clark Hoyt, deserves credit for his understanding of the word “terror.” Alas, all too often, those who write for his paper don’t.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

At issue is an op-ed by Edward Luttwak, President Apostate?, in which Luttwak wrote:

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his motherâ€s Christian background is irrelevant.

and

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings. (Some may point to cases in which lesser punishments were ordered — as with some Egyptian intellectuals who have been punished for writings that were construed as apostasy — but those were really instances of supposed heresy, not explicitly declared apostasy as in Senator Obamaâ€s case.)It is true that the criminal codes in most Muslim countries do not mandate execution for apostasy (although a law doing exactly that is pending before Iranâ€s Parliament and in two Malaysian states). But as a practical matter, in very few Islamic countries do the governments have sufficient authority to resist demands for the punishment of apostates at the hands of religious authorities.

Clark Hoyt, the public editor of the NYT saw fit to second guess the paper’s decision to run this op-ed. This is the short version of the points Luttwak made that Hoyt sought to address:

Luttwak made several sweeping statements that the scholars I interviewed said were incorrect or highly debatable, including assertions that in Islam a fatherâ€s religion always determines a childâ€s, regardless of the facts of his upbringing; that Obamaâ€s “conversion” to Christianity was apostasy; that apostasy is, with few exceptions, a capital crime; and that a Muslim could not be punished for killing an apostate.

Hoyt talked to five Islamic scholars who objected to the generalizations in Luttwak’s article. Here’s on objection:

Luttwak wrote that given those facts, Obama was a Muslim and his motherâ€s Christian background was irrelevant. But Sherman A. Jackson, a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Michigan, cited an ancient Islamic jurist, Ibn al-Qasim, who said, “If you divorce a Christian woman and ignore your child from her to the point that the child grows up to be a Christian, the child is to be left,” meaning left to make his own choice. Jackson said that there was not total agreement among Islamic jurists on the point, but Luttwakâ€s assertion to the contrary was wrong.

Maybe, but I wonder if, in this case, “not total agreement” means something like a 50-50 split or if the consensus by a wide margin favors Luttwak’s interpretation. If the former I can accept the criticism; if the latter is true, then Luttwak was not too far off in generalizing.

Another objection was:

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naâ€im, a professor of law at Emory University, said that Sharia, or Islamic law, including the law of apostasy, does not apply to an American or anyone outside the Muslim world. Of the more than 40 countries where Muslims are the majority, he said, Sharia is the official legal system only in Saudi Arabia and Iran, and even there apostasy is unevenly prosecuted, and apostates often wind up in prison, not executed.

Nearly every Islamic state has a clause in its constitution declaring that it follows Islamic law. How closely they follow Sharia may vary in practice, but Islamic law is codified as the law of the land. As far as Prof. An-Na’im’s second assertion, that’s exactly what Luttwak said. So this particular objection actually confirms parts of Luttwak’s case.

Anyway, regardless of how substantive the criticisms of Luttwak were, Hoyt concludes:

Shipley, the Op-Ed editor, said he regretted not urging Luttwak to soften his language about possible assassination, given how sensitive the subject is. But he said he did not think the Op-Ed page was under any obligation to present an alternative view, beyond some letters to the editor.I do not agree. With a subject this charged, readers would have been far better served with more than a single, extreme point of view. When writers purport to educate readers about complex matters, and they are arguably wrong, I think The Times cannot label it opinion and let it go at that.

I don’t think that Hoyt made the case that Luttwak’s was “…a single, extreme point of view” and, in fact, he even acknowledges that a paragraph somewhat softening the tone of the article was edited out to the displeasure of Luttwak.

But then there’s the larger problem here. In this case Hoyt objects to “…a single, extreme point of view” but he hasn’t always. In fact once upon time he wrote:

Op-ed pages should be open especially to controversial ideas, because thatâ€s the way a free society decides whatâ€s right and whatâ€s wrong for itself. Good ideas prosper in the sunshine of healthy debate, and the bad ones wither. Left hidden out of sight and unchallenged, the bad ones can grow like poisonous mushrooms.Rosenthal and Shipley said that, over time, they try to publish a variety of voices on the most important issues. Regular op-ed readers have seen a wide range of views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have a lot of other information to help judge Yousefâ€s statements.

Yes, I know the second paragraph mitigates the sentiments in the first one. Still Hoyt’s principle is that controversial ideas are an important part of an op-ed page. Luttwak’s op-ed was clearly controversial and perhaps it would have been reasonable to publish a critical op-ed that disputed Luttwak.

But even at that Ahmed Yousef’s op-ed wasn’t so much “controversial” as it was propaganda from a terrorist organization. (Hoyt also didn’t find that propaganda as disturbing as he found a column by Henry Blodget that wasn’t even show to be false!)

What’s clear is that an opinion that is worthwhile because it’s controversial is in the eye of public editor, not a set principle.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.