Media navel-gazers are obsessing that the son of Ethan Bronner, a New York Times correspondent in Israel, recently joined the Israeli Defense Forces. Times ombudsman says Bronner should take a different assignment. The blog of NYT insiders sees no conflict of interest. Natcherly. Ditto for left-liberal Haaretz in Tel Aviv. Double Natch. Times editor Bill Keller stands by his man. Triple natch.
But Electronic Intifada and Angry Arab beg to differ, saying Bronner’s coverage tilts toward the Jewish state.
There’s a measure of truth in that charge, if only because Bronner’s reporting inevitably embodies some of the cultural assumptions of his workplace. At the New York Times, those assumptions include secular liberalism, moral relativism, empiricism, cynicism, feminism, Zionism, and a few other -isms too scandalous to mention here. Calling for his reassignment is a way of calling attention to those assumptions.
It is also true that Bronner, like many a journalist in the region who tries to adhere to professional standards, is vulnerable to being smeared as “pro-Palestinian,” (in this case by my old friend Steve Emerson. I met Steve when we both worked for Marty Peretz at TNR. Steve had the more agreeable personality; Marty, the more capacious mind, relatively speaking.)
Proceed to Thought Experiment #1: Imagine Anthony Shadid, former Washington Post and current NYT Lebanese-American correspondent in the Middle East, has a son or daughter who is active in the boycott and divestiture movement targetting Israel on the American college campuses? (Full disclosure alert: I’ve shaken Shadid’s paw a couple of times. I don’t know if he has kids or if they are pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian; both, I hope.) Would/should such a filial political commitment disqualify Shadid from covering Israel for a newspaper of record?
Quite apart from what I think (no), I suspect that Israel’s supporters would be able to make it enough of an issue that the Post/Time senior editors would discretely choose not assign him to Jerusalem. Does anybody with elite media newsroom experience disagree?
The matter at hand is Bronner. The probable difference in the treatment of a Jewish journalist and an Arab-American colleague is the issue.
