The New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren was recently the guest of a Voice of Israel radio show. Host Josh Hasten asked her about criticism she has received that the Times’ coverage of Israel was biased. Her response was that media watchdog groups were not really basing their criticisms on objective standards. Rather, groups like HonestReporting have their own agenda and are simply upset with her for not being more pro-Israel.
We reject this charge. Here are just a few examples of how Rudoren’s reporting fails even the most basic journalistic standards.
1) August 14: Rudoren tweets that the charge that Hamas intimidates journalists is “nonsense.” Here is a mountain of evidence. Here is Hamas’s admission to harassing journalists. Even her own paper described an example of the Hamas intimidation she calls “nonsense” a few days later. We covered it here.
2) June 29: Rudoren publishes an article comparing the mother of the three Israeli boys kidnapped and murdered by Hamas with the mother of a Palestinian who was killed while attacking Israeli soldiers. Is it an objective journalistic standard to draw a false moral equivalence? (Not according to Rudoren’s colleague, the New York Times Public Editor.) We covered it here.
3) August 24: Rudoren bases an entire piece on the claims of a Palestinian teenager, the son of a Hamas official. There is no corroborating evidence for the story. David Bernstein, writing in the Washington Post had this to say about the Times article:
If the Times’s reporters could actually corroborate the story, more power to them in publishing it. But at this point, they are just repeating unconfirmed allegations from a dubious source, in other words, passing along wartime propaganda as news.
So is “passing along wartime propaganda” an acceptable standard of journalism? Is David Bernstein a “pro-Israel activist?”
4) January 26: Rudoren published a piece overly critical of the efforts of Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and the Shurat HaDin (the Israel Law Center) organization. This group files lawsuits against countries and organizations that sponsor terrorist attacks. Rudoren digs deep to attempt to discredit Leitner and her organization. Here is what we said at the time:
Perhaps we could say that this is actually professional journalism on the part of Rudoren, digging to find vested interests or examining the credibility of her interviewees. Except that this level of investigative skepticism is reserved only for one side.
What happens when Rudoren deals with an anti-Israel NGO? In May 2014 we flagged a story by Rudoren concerned with the so-called Palestinian “Nakba,” where she leaned heavily on a radical anti-Israel non-governmental organization called Zochrot, which she described as “advocating the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants.”
As HonestReporting noted, Rudoren didn’t bother to mention Zochrot’s anti-Zionist activities including support for a one-state solution and the end of Jewish sovereignty, as well as the production of a highly disturbing video featuring a radical activist who visits the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and adopts the persona of the “Holocaust,” claiming to be “the best thing that ever happened” to the Jewish people.
So why is it then, that Jodi Rudoren’s profile of a Zionist activist from a pro-Israel NGO is reduced to the level of a hit piece while a radical organization from the polar opposite end of the political spectrum is treated with kid gloves?
Now, Darshan-Leitner has been part of an effort that has won a judgement against the Palestinian Authority. Will we see a follow-up piece by Rudoren admitting that she may have been too critical and too dismissive of Darshan-Leitner’s efforts?
There are many more examples. Just search for “Rudoren” on the HonestReporting website. That way you can be the judge of whether we are the ones with a biased agenda.
