Tuesday
Aug152006
I have to stop
Ursula Lindsey
The New York Times' coverage of the Lebanon war is a scab I can't stop picking.
The latest, from Steven Erlanger, is as dumb-founding as always.
Written entirely from the strategic viewpoint of the Israeli government, this "news analysis" posits that the ceasefire depends on the Lebanese blaming Hezbullah for the damage the Israelis have done. If the Lebanese don't turn on Hezbullah, and the UN doesn't disarm the group, Israel will be forced to reinvade.
Erlanger ends with the following paragraph:
I must be dreaming. Israel is now the upholder of international borders? Israel invaded Lebanon to help further its plans to give the Palestinians a state? Did Mr. Erlanger ask Mr. Feldman about the many borders that Israel has crossed or erased? Did he point out that according to UN observers Israelis have crossed the Lebanese border about 10 times more often than Hezbullah has? Did he ask him if pounding Gaza as well as Lebanon is part of Israel's hopes to establish a Palestinian state?
How can a New York Times reporter not only let an interviewee get away unchallenged with statements such as these, but go on to print them? The only answer I can find is: because the reporter is a propagandist.
The latest, from Steven Erlanger, is as dumb-founding as always.
Written entirely from the strategic viewpoint of the Israeli government, this "news analysis" posits that the ceasefire depends on the Lebanese blaming Hezbullah for the damage the Israelis have done. If the Lebanese don't turn on Hezbullah, and the UN doesn't disarm the group, Israel will be forced to reinvade.
Erlanger ends with the following paragraph:
The Lebanese war also raises even more serious questions, suggests Shai Feldman, director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis, about the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Israel respected the international border with Lebanon as verified by the United Nations, and it was Hezbollah that violated the border. “If international borders mean nothing,� Mr. Feldman asked, “why should the Israeli public support a withdrawal from the West Bank to create a Palestinian state?�
Preserving the idea of a two-state solution is one reason Mr. Olmert went to war, Mr. Feldman said. And it is one reason the Security Council acted as strongly as it did to defend the integrity of the international border and mandate an expanded United Nations force to protect it. But whether Israelis will trust those guarantees is yet another open question.
I must be dreaming. Israel is now the upholder of international borders? Israel invaded Lebanon to help further its plans to give the Palestinians a state? Did Mr. Erlanger ask Mr. Feldman about the many borders that Israel has crossed or erased? Did he point out that according to UN observers Israelis have crossed the Lebanese border about 10 times more often than Hezbullah has? Did he ask him if pounding Gaza as well as Lebanon is part of Israel's hopes to establish a Palestinian state?
How can a New York Times reporter not only let an interviewee get away unchallenged with statements such as these, but go on to print them? The only answer I can find is: because the reporter is a propagandist.
Reader Comments (6)
Shame on NYT!
I dunno. I thought the article was very stupid, but it struck me that Erlanger is a naif on this subject. I don't see malice, only unfamiliariaty and gullibility.
As if the IDF is really worried about the Syrian military.
Ursula, you're so right about NYT coverage of this conflict...it is what has made me stop reading the bloody newspaper khaalis (and this after having it as my home page for many years).
Erlanger has written sensible articles before, so one can only surmise that this conflict has had the same circling-the-wagons effect on influential American Jews as it has had on Israel. I never really bought the argument that the NYT was any more knee-jerk sympathetic to Israel than any other respectable American newspaper till this summer. You'd think they'd be a leetle bit worried about credibility...
The New York Times’ coverage of the Lebanon war is a scab I can’t stop picking.
Well put. I know the feeling.
Some of the other NYT reporters have done a better job, but Erlanger has reliably relayed Israeli gov/military/intelligence assertions as fact, sometimes with one citation, "Israeli intelligence officers say," serving for the 1500 words that follow.
The WaPo has done a better job throughout. Wonder what line the Times will take now that the Israelis have (apparently) soured on the war.
Whats sad is, the number of people, humans, who get caught in this web of lies.
Agreed on the general ineptitude of NYT reporters (including obviously inadequate language skills*), but I want to emphasize the role of editors.
The paper version of the NYT has different photos and in general a slightly better editorial line (the selection of articles to foreground, I mean) than the online version. The difference can be quite stark at times -- the online NYT might have three lead articles on Hezbollah's rockets, Israeli casualties and Assad ranting, while the paper version has a photo of Beirut's civilian casualties filling half the front page. Then we have the NYT Sunday magazine which is a Zionist sunday school brochure combined with Vogue Fall/Winter 2006 .
*cf. A review of al-sifara fi-l-'imara last summer which suggested the NYT Cairo reporter had not much more Arabic than Thomas Friedman, who also enjoyed analysing Arabic popular culture at one time. (Including a memorable hatchet-job of Muhammad Sobhi's play _Mama Amrika_)