NY Times public editor Daniel Okrent addresses the Times’ description of Sheikh Yassin as a ‘spiritual leader’ of Hamas:
Nowhere in The Times’s coverage is the choice of words more flammable than in the paper’s reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I’ve been noting objections from both sides (although, I’ll acknowledge, many more from pro-Israel readers) for months, trying to discern whether there’s a pattern, as some charge, revealing one-sidedness. I’m nowhere near a conclusion on this larger question, but on this one – on Sheik Yassin – Mr. Irving [a reader who complained to Okrent] is right.
“Spiritual leader” may be correct, but only in the way that it’s accurate to say that Texas is bigger than Rhode Island; there’s much more to the story, and the two words can leave a mistaken impression. No one on either side seems to disagree with the assertion that Sheik Yassin was an ideological and political figure as well, and that in his sermons he endorsed killing as part of the Hamas strategy. The problem isn’t that “spiritual leader” does not convey this – it’s that it conveys something very, very different.
