Journalism how-not-to: New York Times (6/7/18) puts the attack in the headline, reveals it’s a smear in paragraph 20.
A reporter at the most influential paper in English-language media appears to not know the difference between a government “tightly editing” and selectively editing video.
New York Times reporter Herbert Buchsbaum (6/7/18) wrote up a propaganda video posted by the Israeli Defense Force, showing Rouzan al-Najjar–a 21-year-old medic the Israeli Defense Force shot and killed earlier this month—apparently throwing a tear-gas canister, along with a brief clip of her purportedly saying, “I am here on the front line and I act as a human shield.”
The video seems to suggest that throwing a device spewing caustic gas away from people into an empty field is a sort of violence. (“This medic was incited by Hamas,” the video reads as she grabs the canister.) But the primary problem with the IDF video is that it deceptively edits her comments to distort what she said—a fact not noted by the Buchsbaum until paragraph 20, when he threw in this crucial piece of information:
In the longer video, the comment that the military translated as “I act as a human shield” was part of a sentence in which Ms. Najjar said, “I’m acting as a human rescue shield to protect the injured inside the armistice line.”
“Acting as a human shield to protect the injured inside the armistice line” has a radically different meaning than the commonly understood canard about Palestinians using “human shields” to protect “terrorists.” This hugely consequential fact should have led the story; instead, it’s casually tossed out in the third-to-last paragraph. The story here is that the IDF—as it has been doing for decades—casually lies and distorts facts to suit its narrative. Like all militaries, the Israeli military is not presenting a “dueling narrative” in good faith, as a New York Times tweet suggested; it’s manipulating video, hoping credulous journalists help them muddy the waters, as Buchsbaum did.
Indeed, the bizarre IDF press release write-up serves no other purpose than to reframe the gunning down of the unarmed medic from a clear crime committed by Israel to a Fog of War “dueling narratives between Israel and Hamas” tale of “both sidesism.” Buchsbaum vaguely alludes to—but strangely omits—the deceptive editing in the opening with his risible turn of phrase in paragraph two:
The tightly edited video shows a woman identified as the medic, Rouzan al-Najjar, throwing what appears to be a tear-gas canister.
“Tightly edited”? What does this mean, exactly? “Tight” editing is generally considered a compliment in the film and TV world, and says nothing about deliberate omissions for the purposes of misleading the viewer. When videographer Tate B. James confronted Buchsbaum about this fact, Buchsbaum appeared to think he had covered his bases:
hey herbert, any reason why you waited until the 20th paragraph to let folks know the video was selectively edited?
— Tate James (@tatebjames) June 8, 2018
a music video is “tightly edited”, herbert. that video is *deceptively* edited. there’s a difference
— Tate James (@tatebjames) June 8, 2018
Either Buchsbaum doesn’t know he’s being misleading, and is thus severely unqualified to be writing for a major paper, or he knows he’s spinning in Israel’s favor, but was hoping no one would really notice. Either way, the New York Times is once again (FAIR.org, 7/14/17, 5/17/18, 5/15/18) using its pages to confuse readers to the benefit of the Israeli military.
You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com (Twitter:@NYTOpinion). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
The only credulity extant here is that which the corpress fervently hopes we possess, and strives mightily to encourage.
The only credulity extant here is that which the corpress fervently hopes we possess, and strives mightily to encourage.
New York CRIMES against real journalism. Wow, so a medic tosses a tear gas canister away from patients—-and she’s a terrorist? Wow, # 2 didn’t that canister come from Israel anyway? Wow # 3 I’m sorry Mr. Buchsbaum—–but this is not reporting and you are not a reporter—-this is propaganda———why did you get hired-or is this the NY Times policy now? I am left wondering.
Not to defend the Times and Buchsbaum, but one has to remember that the NY Times fired many copy editors within the last 12 months, and more generally its standards for language and meaning have become worse and worse over the last 20 years.
Just last week an obituary of a general called the 2003 US invasion of Iraq an intervention, very much implying some civil war in Iraq in 2003, or massive natural disaster.
More bluntly: It’s pretty easy to make a case for Buchsbaum and his editors at the NY Times being just not real smart.
Look at the infamous Amy Chozick of the NY Times; her “Chasing Hillary” book, which ostensibly had a fact checker, starts off with the Hudson River visible from White Plaines, New York; it isn’t. Then the sun is coming up in the west.
More seriously, Ms Chozick late in the book claims that Hillary Clinton was making massive monies for speaking while still an US Senator. This is of course untrue, and were the claim true Ms Chozick would be providing evidence that Hillary was committing crimes while in the Senate; such fees are illegal.
Most seriously, because it expresses Ms Chozick’s inability to care about basic facts and the general welfare of most of the US populace: Ms Chozick asserts that the lead in the drinking water of Flint Michigan comes from the river in Flint. She’s completely wrong, the river water is so corrosive that it freed up lead in pipes and joints–most cities have lead in pipes and watermains. Also she’s displaying a gross ignorance of the consequences of “deregulated” public policy. The more expensive water (from Detroit) that had been the Flint drinking water was treated to avoid freeing up lead already in pipes in Flint, Detroit, etc.
My point is that the NY Times isn’t employing especially bright reporters any longer. Writing in the NYT, Maggie Haberman in June 2017 repeated the lie that “17 agencies agree that Russia interfered in the election to elect Trump”. This lie was widely understood and documented to be just that a lie as of June 2017, but “somehow” it was acceptable to publish. (The Times issued something of a sloppy and inaccurate correction a few days later, still implying the matter settled–if not by 17 agencies.)
There is a difference between not being too smart and trying to Outsmart and deceive people to portray the IDF and Israel as the victims. This isn’t new for the NYT nor any other influential media outlet. It has been the ultimate goal of Israel to control the narrative of how they should be portrayed in the media so they can continue to milk the golden calf to the tune of billions of dollars a year. For just that reason alone Israel has it’s soldiers strategically placed in every corner of the news media.
Sam:
Right, but the deception in the NYTimes and elsewhere is frequently not smart. And it’s been getting worse over the last 20 years.
There’s the “intervened” instead of “invaded” that I cited above. There’s the NY Times declaring in early January 2015 that there had no been a coup in Ukraine in February 2014–despite the coup in Ukraine fitting the definition of the term perfectly. These lies are so egregious that only an idiot, or an idiot who took readers for being bigger idiots, would attempt them.
Whatever the ultimate causes, and who was funding it, there was a vicious civil war in Yugoslavia in the mid-early 1990s. And Iraq really did invade Kuwait in 1990. (The Times didn’t bother to report that Iraq offered to withdraw from Kuwait with some normal conditions in the middle of August 1990.)
So it’s that Times “editors” and “reporters” think they can make these substitutions–eg a medic at a protest tosses aside a tear gas canister and becomes the party who somehow introduced the canister into the protest. That’s laughable reporting which 20 years ago the Times would have been very hard pressed to try.
I posted my extended point about Chozick above, because she makes it easy, and she’d written a book, employed a fact checker, but couldn’t get basic things correct. Ms Chozick has deservedly taken a lot of hell for her garbage Hillary reporting in the pages of the paper, but this is a book that one would think someone preparing for publication would glance at for more than spelling.
I genuinely believe that Ms Chozick is so stupid, that’s the word, that she doesn’t know that the lead in the drinking water of Flint Michigan comes from pipes (similar to pipes pretty much every city in the USA) not from the water of the river. And she’s a star political reporter. So is Maggie Haberman, lately lying on twitter about the Michelle Wolf Sarah Huckabee Sanders joke Ms Wolf told.
Sure you can single out deceptive reporting from the Times on Israel. (And the Times is treated as anti-Israel by the likes of Fox and the NY Post.) Or decades ago the the Times’ correspondent in Athens (a Sulzberger) was caught lying about the rightist coup there.
But it sure seems to me these lies in the NYT were done with a lot more finness. Case in point, as a reporter the now columnist Nick Kristof wrote a small book selling W as a likeable ex-drunk in the pages of the NYT starting in May 2000 and ending in Sept. I certainly didn’t read every word, but noted no obvious lies; the tone was very kind to W. Rolling Stone published a W profile in early 2000 which covered many of the same facts but took a darker tone. The slight of hand that Kristof pulled was that it was well established by May 2000 that W had skipped out on his Alabama Air National Guard assignment (no, not Texas, that’s where he started in the NG and received all sorts of unheard of favors and special training). So that’s Kristof lying by omission, but doing so much more smartly.
Now of course, in 2018, Kristof lies about his 2002 support for the invasion of Iraq as an NY Times columnist, and he supposes no one can look at his old columns.
New York Times runs hit pieces on murdered medics.
They also did propaganda for Bushs war based on lies, from which, the fallout and the blowback continues, and continues to flare up, and continues to threaten to get worse.
New York Times runs hit pieces on murdered medics.
They also did propaganda for Bushs war based on lies, from which, the fallout and the blowback continues, and continues to flare up, and continues to threaten to get worse.
What is one to expect from the NEW YORK ZIONS?
Self-defense is not murder.
The boy who cried wolf.
Using medical personnel & ambulances for terrorism has put innocent Palestinians in danger.
Israel would be putting its citizens in danger if it assumed that a Palestinian dressed as a medic really is a medic.
Locating Hamas headquarters in a hospital doesn’t help.
Jack, so you subsume the murder of an unarmed medic under the rubric of “self-defense”? And “Israel would be putting its citizens in danger if it assumed that a Palestinian dressed as a medic really is a medic.” Jack, that is carte blanche to kill anyone, much as the US targets any male as an enemy combatant, even a group of farmers in their fields, or a wedding party gathering.
I, on the other hand, submit that acts considered as “terrorism” are justified if no “legitimate” (that is, effective) recourse to oppression exists. Resistance is not terrorism. Rather, Israel’s collective repression imposed on Gaza constitutes terrorism, just as US drones terrorize entire countries, and US trained, equipped, and advised foreign militaries and police terrorize their own indigenous populations (e.g., the assassination of Berta Caceres, among many others), and ICE and DHS terrorize immigrants, and US police departments terrorize ghetto or minority communities.
The New York times HAVE YOU NO DECENCY? All the bullshit that’s fit to print, the more you read the less you know.