Washington Post ombud Patrick Pexton weighed in yesterday (7/31/11) on the criticisms of right-wing Post blogger Jennifer Rubin. She was among a handful of media personalities who declared the Norway terror attacks to be the work of Muslim jihadists. As she put it (7/22/11): “In all likelihood the attack was launched by part of the jihadist hydra…. As the attack in Oslo reminds us, there are plenty of Al-Qaeda allies still operating.”
This would seem to be an easy call for an ombud—news outlets should try to shy away from baseless, bigoted speculation. But that’s not Pexton’s point; right from the start, he expressed sympathy with Rubin:
When I received my Post e-mail alert about the bombing in Norway, my first thought was that it was Al-Qaeda.
Pexton wonders why he got so much mail about Rubin, attributing that fact to “her style, her faith, how the liberal and conservative blogospheres work on the news cycle, and, finally, a certain American insensitivity toward mass casualties in other lands.”
Well, maybe. Or perhaps some people are bothered by outlets that publish vicious, baseless innuendo.
In discussing why Rubin didn’t modify her post after the news that the suspect Anders Breivik was not a Muslim terrorist at all, Pexton explains:
Rubin has a good defense. She is Jewish. She generally observes the Sabbath from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday; she doesn’t blog, doesn’t tweet, doesn’t respond to reader e-mails.
OK. But then it’s hard to fathom what she wrote when she did check in—one of the only criticisms Pexton seems to think is legitimate:
When she went online at 8 p.m. Saturday, her mea culpa post on Norway was the first thing she posted, although its tone also hurt her, particularly this sentence, which struck many readers as borderline racist: “There are many more jihadists than blond Norwegians out to kill Americans, and we should keep our eye on the systemic and far more potent threats that stem from an ideological war with the West.”
Pexton goes on offers some mush about the ideological divide:
Liberals and conservatives don’t talk to each other much anymore…. If your politics are liberal and you don’t generally read Rubin, but you read her Norway posts, you probably would be pretty offended. But if you are a conservative, or someone who reads Rubin regularly, you’ll know that this is what she does and who she is.
Is that supposed to be a defense of her writing—that she regularly publishes ill-informed speculation? Pexton had a chat with Rubin and decided that
she is not an ogre or a racist. And she does not deserve some of the calumny she got. Some of the e-mail she received was way over the line—ugly, obscene, vile and, worst, containing threats of physical harm.
You can sense that Pexton’s conclusion is drifting in that direction—the real problem is her critics. But I was surprised at how far he went:
This brings us back to the shootings in Norway, an act committed by a disturbed man who drew some of his inspiration from extremist websites. A blogosphere given to vitriol and hasty judgments ought to consider the possible consequences of its own online attacks.
Pexton’s point seems to be that liberal-left critics of Rubin are like the Islamophobic blogs were cited in the manifesto Breivik wrote to explain his murderous terrorism; it doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that Rubin’s original post resembled Breivik’s actual inspirations, not only in tone but in content.
So, according to the Post ombud, the writers who pointed out the inaccurate, bigoted punditry of someone with a perch on a major newspaper’s website are like hatemongers, and may just inspire a killing spree. Wow.
all this fuss over a pajama journalist on auto-pilot response mode?
The worst thing was that, whatever the logic of Rubin’s religious observances, the Post failed to take down or amend her blog post for days. On my facebook page, the lede sentence below the headline (visible without clicking the link) was something like “jihadis kill scores”. What a disgrace.
I didn’t realize that “apologist” was part of the job description for a media outlet ombud.
Or that “impartial watchdog” wasn’t.
But there I go, getting all Vulcan again.
The “press” operates pretty much in a vacuum. Always has. They know, for all their blabbering about ethics, that their job is to provide propaganda to direct the thinking of those of us who are ” the great unwashed”. They really don’t give a damn what we think of what they say or their methods. It’s a one-way street as far as they are concerned. What hurts them is if advertisers are offended, or if readership drops to the point that advertisers no longer have an audience. So, if ya don’t like what a propaganda outlet is saying or doing, quit subscribing quit reading, quit listening.
What I find rather interesting is Pexton’s explanation (justification?) for Rubin’s failure to immediately correct herself: she’s Jewish. That passage begins with the flat statement that she’s Jewish as if that is a sufficient basis in itself to immediately assume that al Qaeda was behind the massacre in Norway. If you read no further, yes, of course, she’s Jewish. No wonder she immediately blames al Qaeda. After all, Arabs hate Jews, no? To be sure, Pexton goes on to explain about the Sabbath, that due to her religous observance, she is not permitted to work. But the way it’s written is that it assumes that her being Jewish is sufficient reason–justifiable reason–for her to jump to the conclusion tha al Qaeda was behind the shootings. And I’m willing to bet that many readers, both Jews and non-Jews, buy into this. To think otherwise is to be anti-Semtic, yes? The problem with this is that the Jewish community as a whole is anything but unified in its position on Palestine, Israel, the Middle East–and al Qaeda. However, the mainstream media usually assumes that is the case and fails to look at the diversity of positions within Judaism. Anyway, which is the greater moral crime, failure to correct a mistake that has potentially serious social/political consequences, one that serves to perpetuate bigotry, or failure to personally observe a religious law? (Shall we call God? I got his number right here; it’s a local call.) Finally, I make one final statement. The history of domestic terrorism is the US–whether lynchings by the KKK, white race riots in Cincinnati in 1836 (against abolitionists and the black population), actions of the Confederacy in East Tennessee in 1861, bombings of abortion clinics, Oklahoma City, shootings in Arizona, federal and state policy and actions towards and against the indigenous peoples in the US (think of the Trail of Tears)–comes overwhelmingly from the right, from an entrenched power that feels threatened and resorts to acts of terroism to sustain or restore that power. The same is true for terrorism abroad, whether in Norway or the Middle East.
Yes, terrorism comes from the right, but it is not the right we are dealing with here. It is the media, or rather, that segment of the media that claims to bring us news. It consistently distorts reality to support the naive, self-destructive political views of its advertisers, as both HReading and JB aptly note above.
Our recent experience with ignorant tea party nihilists warns us that unless we are informed, there is no hope for America. And yet a flood of misrepresentation continues to spew from our professional commentators, and we are now seeing increased bias in newscasts, news articles, headlines, subheads, captions, choice of subjects and their placement.
With apologies to Pogo, we have met the enemy and he is the U.S. press.
i strikes me that “a certain American insensitivity toward mass casualties in other lands,” led rubin to use it to try and score some cheap political points with her american readers, but what do i know?
as for “A blogosphere given to vitriol and hasty judgments,” that is a perfect description of the rubin post that people responded to….
Pexton’s “explanation” for Rubin’s rash misfire is itself racialist. Being Jewish is both an ethnic and a religious identity. Clearly Judaism the religion does not teach libeling others. So Pexton is arguing that Rubin’s ethnic identity makes her prone to false, rash statements. This is racialism of exactly the same kind that caused Rubin to immediately assume that Anders Breivik must be a Muslim.
Also, FAIR should tell Pexton put up or shut up on the issue of “threats of physical violence.” Threats of physical violence are crimes, and need to be reported to the police. I will give you odds that no such report was made because they were of the “you deserve to be horsewhipped” variety. While statements like that should be condemned, they do not constitute a threat.
I read the WA Post every day, but have never read, nor even heard of, Jennifer Rubin. After reading this, with the several quotes from her piece on the Norway deaths, I’m glad I haven’t! The Post has hired a number of conservative oped writers, apparently trying to balance the liberals, and they all seem polemicists to me. My respect for the Post has declined a great deal.
Rubin has attacked people on the right and the left for not being supportive of israel.Im sure her knee jerk first instinct was probably exactly what Obama thought on hearing the news. Another Islamic attack. Understandable in light of the percentage of attacks carried out by muslim extremists. And certainly her experience with israel has all her red flags up in that direction. Of course She should of recanted the story quickly when it came to light that he was just a nut. Past that are we really wasting time on a reporter who jumped the gun and got a story wrong?FAIR should not be wasting time on non stories.
All of you have some good points. However, has it ever occurred to you that when a Westerner, a Caucasian, etc. commits an atrocious crime, he is either deranged, nuts, out of his mind, etc. and his religion (except in this last case) is never mentioned. When it is an Al-Quaeda-type group, they do this crime in cold blood and in command of all their factulties and of course, if they are Moslem, their religion always leads the headline. This in itself is biased and discriminatory.
Here is perhaps the worst thing about Rubin’s posting. By the time she put it up (at 5:56 on that terrible Friday), the authorities in Norway had ALREADY identified the shooter as a blonde, blue eyed native son of the country. If Rubin had had the simple common sense to turn on a radio or TV before posting her screed, she might have also had the common sense to not hit “send.” But she couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to the news. After all, she only works for a newspaper–in the Nation’s Capital. That’s why I wrote to the ombudsman demanding that the Post dismiss her. Instead, he issued an apologia.
Laila I think you are confusing perception with proof.It is not a perception that these muslim terrorists are killing with religion(theirs)being the primary motivation.It is proved to be true by their own words(often in long diatribes recorded before their deaths).Catholics don’t kill yelling “FOR THE POPE”. Actually if they did -they would according to their religion go to hell. These people believe they will go to “heaven” for their actions. This is a seminal difference.Also here is another truth.Though all Muslim are not all terrorists.You will notice most terrorists are muslim.This is not by any means simply a distortion of the press.This is an ongoing fact that points to a serious problem of the distortion taking place within the Islamic faith.
The bottom line of this story will be felt in airports .See they will say;profiling does not work.Even blond christians kill.Yes yes they do.And we must be vigilant.But….the larger problem is still from another faction.
turns out that pexton’s sabbath excuse doesn’t hold up….
eric alterman: “Sunset, the moment that the Jewish Sabbath begins, was at approximately 8:20 p.m. in Washington, D.C. on Friday, July 22, 2011. That offered Rubin plenty of time to correct her mistake. Rubin, as Pexton notes, did manage to post four additional items to her blog between 5:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.”
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/08/ta080411.html
As a Jew, I find Pexton’s references to Rubin’s Jewishness as a mitigating factor in her racist nonsense to be both presumptuous and patronizing.