The first is that we believe in verification rather than assertion. We put a higher premium on accuracy than on speed or sensation. When we report information, we look hard to see if it stands up to scrutiny
…
Being right is necessary but not sufficient. We also strive to be impartial. We are agnostic as to where a story may lead; we do not go into a story with a preconceived notion. We do not manipulate or hide facts to advance an agenda. We strive to preserve our independence from political and economic interests, including our own advertisers and including our own government. (NPR, whose news coverage I admire, must surely be wondering whether a federal subsidy is worth its vulnerability to the riptides of Congressional politics.)
…
But just as doctors and lawyers, teachers and military officers, judges and the police are expected to set aside their own politics in the performance of their duties, so are our employees. This does not mean — as one writer recently scoffed — that we “poll people at both extremes of any issue, then paint a line down the middle and point to it as reality.” It does not mean according equal weight to every point of view, no matter how far-fetched. (Sorry, birthers, but President Obama is an American citizen.) Impartiality is, for us, not just a matter of pretending to be neutral; it is a healthful, intellectual discipline. Once you proclaim an opinion, you may feel an urge to defend it, and that creates a temptation to overlook inconvenient facts when you should be searching them out.
I think this last part is exactly right. And I also like that Keller doesn’t fall into the traditional “this is all the fault of the bloggers” line of reasoning. In fact, he even takes a shot at that precept: “…worrying that the accelerated competition of Web news has undermined our premium on accuracy.”
There’s still, and will continue to be, a place for real, verifiable, reporting. Some if it is done in newspapers, some of it is done in blogs. There’s also a good deal of shoddy journalism in both. It’s heartening to see an executive at one of the finest news organizations in the country talking frankly about the structural incentives that shape the way news is produced and consumed. That’s the first step to better aligning those incentives with the public interest.
AT&T announced on Sunday that it agreed to buy T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom, in a $39 billion deal that will reshape the cellular telephone industry.
So says the NYT, confining their interest in the effects this deal will have on consumers to the following paragraph:
Already, some critics say the deal will result in higher prices for consumers. T-Mobile had offered some of the lowest rates in the county. While AT&T is expected to honor current T-Mobile contracts, it is likely that once those contracts expire, T-Mobile customers would be expected to pay AT&T’s higher rates.
…followed by:
Even so, AT&T’s bid will solve the problem facing T-Mobile USA, the smallest of the country’s four major cellphone service providers. Both companies operate on the same wireless standard, GSM. Through the deal, T-Mobile will finally gain a path for the next generation of cellphone data, known as 4G, by using AT&T’s forthcoming LTE standard.
Arguably, the reason that smaller providers like T-Mobile are having a hard time getting access to 4G infrastructure is because there’s so little meaningful competition in the wireless market to begin with (from my perspective, most of the competition is in marketing, not actual services provided). This deal promises to make all that worse, not better.
The deal will also drive enormous cost savings. The combined company is expected to shutter retail outlets in areas where they overlap as well eliminate overlapping back office, technical and call center staff. Marketing costs could also be cut. Cellular carriers have been one of the biggest advertising spenders in the nation.
I wouldn’t hang around on the edge of my seat for AT&T to pass those savings on to customers. Also, it would be nice if the NYT considered these “cost savings” from a perspective other than AT&T’s bottom line. Consolidating retail, office, technical, and support staff = job losses.
Yet one more piece of evidence that what’s good for industry isn’t always good for the country.
When the J Street smear video broke (see my last post), CiF Watch tweeted a link to it, saying I was pro-BDS (I’m not). I replied, and over the next hour or so, we had a conversation about anti-semitism and anti-Zionism. I committed to writing a post exploring what I believe to be substantive differences between the two. I think an understanding of those differences is key for Zionists (or anyone who’s not an anti-Zionist) – crying wolf at false cases of anti-semitism is not only incredibly damaging to those accused, which in and of itself should be enough of a reason not to do it, but ultimately counterproductive in actually identifying real cases of anti-semitism.
I’m planning to write that post tomorrow or early next week, but here’s the conversation that @CiFWatch and I had on Twitter. CiF Watch deleted their initial tweet claiming I was pro-BDS after I corrected them, so you won’t see that one here. Also note that the conversation goes on beyond the excerpt here – hit the “view more” button at the bottom to see the whole thing.
I was interviewed for the deceptively-title video “2011 J Street Conference.” I’m the guy in the beginning and then later on, with the orange striped shirt.
I left a comment on the video explaining that I was one of the subjects, and objected to the way in which my interview was used. Comments were subsequently disabled, so mine doesn’t show up anymore. I feel that the video is deceptively edited, not true to my opinions, and is being used as a smear against J Street, not as part of a “research project,” which is how the interviewer described it to me. I’ve learned my lesson, and will not agree to such interviews in the future without getting the contact info of the interviewer.
It’s worth dissecting the many messages contained in the video to understand the complexity of what’s going on here. I’ll therefore present a line-by-line transcript of the video (taken from the subtitles) and offer my opinion on each component. Obviously, I can’t speculate on the intentions of the other interviewees, but I’ll explain my positions in the two clips of my interview.
To begin with, the video is set to “Puff the Magic Dragon.” WTF? Is the implication that J Street’s leftist constituents are all stoners or pie-in-the-sky idealists? Either way, I’m pretty offended.
Me: “There is an oppressor and there is an oppressed. Israel is the oppressor and Gazans are being oppressed.”
This requires no justification. I’ve yet to hear a sensible argument against the proposition that Gazans are suffering at the hands of Israelis. Clearly Hamas is part of the picture, a largely corrupt organization with violent tactics that do not serve the Gazan civilian population. Nevertheless, Israel has choices in how to respond, and turning Gaza into a 1.5 million person open-air ghetto through a land and sea blockade and control of resources, airspace, and communications amounts to oppression, plain and simple.
“I support the Palestinians creating their Palestinian state and if need be declaring it unilaterally if there’s no negotiations on it and creating a fait accompli that Israel will have to live with.”
J Street’s official position remains that Palestine should be created through direct negotiations. However, it’s far from radical to propose alternate methods of statehood. In fact, a panel at the conference reflected this reality, discussing the implications of Palestinian statehood mechanisms. Confining discussion of Palestinian statehood to the negotiation-based peace process ignores the growing likelihood that this process will fail. Believe me, I have no desire to see that occur (I’m an optimist), but ignoring its likelihood would change me from an optimist to a denialist.
Q: “Do you think Hamas is a terrorist organization?” A: “Not any more than the IDF is.”
This one I disagree with. It’s a drastic oversimplification to say that the IDF is a terrorist organization, or at least that it’s more so than any other army. I believe this interviewee is wrong. That said, it’s also an oversimplification to label Hamas either terrorists or not terrorists. Do they use abominable tactics of killing, injuring, and frightening Israeli civilians? Yes. That, as the Goldstone report noted, makes them guilty of war crimes. But they came to power in a context where Palestinians were deeply unsatisfied with the slow progress of Fatah. Hamas provides legitimate social services and has, internally, done many important things for Gazans. Arguably, those are outweighed by the damage they do in helping provide a justification for the blockade. Furthermore, nothing excuses war crimes. But the fact remains: Hamas is a lot more complicated than just a bunch of guys with rockets. The question lends itself to oversimplification. When it was asked of me, I felt that that was the idea.
“Something is going to need to be done to force Israel’s hand one way or the other.”
This is pretty vague, and also fairly non-controversial. Hardcore Israel apologists will take issue with the characterization of “forcing Israel’s hand,” but that’s what diplomacy and international relations is – aligning a nation’s self-interest with a desired outcome. As a peacenik, I have no illusions that Israel will suddenly decide the peace process is morally “right” until they are forced to realize it’s in their interest to do so. The same is true, for example, of the American occupation of Afghanistan.
“I think if you look around and you talk to people and you listen to who’s applauding and how loud and… you’ll find that people’s… people’s priorities are more with the activists for peace and justice and less interested in coddling the sort of centrist Zionists.”
Aside from the problems with judging an organization’s political alignment by applause, it’s ironic that this is used here, because I wish it was more true than it actually is. That said, I do understand J Street’s reasons for wooing centrists in the way it does. It’s just frustrating sometimes (welcome to politics). Whatever the case, this really isn’t very good smear material.
“Hamas is… there’s no one Hamas.”
Obviously there is in fact a political organization called Hamas, so this comment is a bit off, but the notion that Hamas is not some unified organization acting with well-defined strategy to destroy Israel is at least as off-base, if not more. I don’t entirely agree with this guy, but what he’s saying isn’t that outrageous.
Q: “Do you think the Israel lobby in the United states has prevented the United States from –” A: “Yes!” Q (cont.): “…from succeeding in the peace process?” A: “Yes, I do. And I am so glad for J Street actually.”
This is actually a good question, and I fully disagree with the answer. The Israel lobby is one of many factors in US inaction, but to blame it for the failure of negotiations is a drastic oversimplification.
“I do support the boycott of Israeli settlements and settlement products.”
There’s a legitimate argument to be made against such boycotts (I strongly support them), but it should be totally obvious that people specifically targeting settlements in a boycott are, even more clearly than those who don’t boycott at all, asserting the “legitimacy” of Israel as a state. If they didn’t, they’d be boycotting the whole thing. This is not to say that anyone engaged in a larger boycott of Israel is opposed to it conceptually, but someone who intentionally singles out settlements likely does so because they believe settlements specifically to be illegitimate.
Me: “Personally, I think I would like to see J Street embrace some of the language that is typically associated with the ‘Radical Left.’”
This is where the editing really gets to me. The point I’d been making here was that J Street’s opposition to what’s generally considered the political left (mainly the BDS movement,) while logically and politically sound, has led to some of J Street’s supporters and allies instinctually dismissing the language that BDS proponents often use to describe the conflict. Language like “oppression” (this is where the first clip of me came from). That language is, in many cases, accurate (as I noted before), and may be tactically useful in helping reclaim the feeling of a moral imperative for the work J Street does, an imperative usually confined to BDS supporters or the Israel-right-or-wrong crowd. I’d like to see J Street assert the validity of our work in a moral sense. The video makes it seem like I want J Street to start getting angry and vitriolic, which I don’t (and for the record, I think leftists do this far less frequently than they’re accused of).
Q: “Do you support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction movement?” A: “More now than I did!”
Providing thought-provoking information – yet another example of the dangerous tactics J Street employs. G&d forbid an organization permit its activists to change their opinions!
That’s about all. If the interviewer or others involved in the creation of the video want to respond, I welcome discussion. Please pass this along to them if you know who they are.
This comment on Jewschool and the one directly following it got me thinking about the ethics of blogging. I’m certainly not the first to ask this question, and I tend to think that although there are certainly formalized differences between bloggers and journalists (the type of information they tend to cover, etc.,) we’re both responsible for our information. Perhaps because bloggers tend to have less editorial oversight, we feel less responsible (and are less apt to be fired or penalized if we get a fact wrong,) but in reality, there’s a certain authority that comes with just claiming to know facts. Anyone with a website that’s at least somewhat respectable – i.e. not a conspiracy theorist – is likely to be taken at least somewhat seriously from the get-go.
So bloggers, regardless of how impartial we are, should strive for the same level of integrity as journalists do. Similarly, we should recognize that blogging, like journalism, can serve an important public function, and we should try to live up to that. Which is why this is particularly disgusting:
There has been widespread condemnation of the violence directed against journalists covering events in Egypt–and there should be. But honestly, I don’t have a great deal of sympathy for those who have been attacked.
Journalists have a job to do, but when they take huge risks for the sake of ratings and then find themselves in trouble, it’s hard to take seriously any “shock” that media executives express about their journalists being targeted.
Despite news organizations’ general preference for ad revenue over real journalism, the fact remains that correspondents in the field are putting themselves in harm’s way for the sake of spreading important information.
Journalists should use judgment and not race into the middle of what amounts to a massive bar room brawl without expecting something bad to happen.
First of all, the situation in Egypt only “amounts to a massive bar room brawl” if half the people in said brawl were paid to be there and to instigate violence. Second of all, I imagine those journalists did expect something to happen. They knew very well what they were getting into, and they did it anyway. That’s laudable.
Bottom line: bloggers and journalists have been providing us with incredibly important information on the ground in Egypt. Show some respect, people.
I wrote a post at Jewschool on J Street’s campaign to get Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (House Foreign Affairs chairwoman) to return campaign contributions from a top funder of East Jerusalem settlements.
But try as we might to cushion the whole world, there will remain an infinite storehouse of freakishly singular hazards that elude imagination and defy the generalisation that feeds caution.
He’s referring, of course, to the Tuscon shooting, and he makes the case that those of us who are calling for stronger gun regulations in the wake of the tragedy are just overreacting and should wait until we calm down.
I think he’s over-psychologizing people like me. Obviously we’re a bit worked up about the whole thing – federal officials were gunned down in broad daylight! Forgive me if that’s something I get a bit upset about.
Some of these proposals may have merit, but no more now than on Friday. The issues they address have become no more urgent. Sadly, people are shot to death every day. The odd and the infirm roam our streets. Some of them buy guns and use them.
This is a complete strawman argument. No one’s claiming that gun crimes are more of a danger now than they were a few days ago. But the issue is in the public eye right now, and I think Wilkinson understates the extent to which the very remedies he makes fun of would actually help the problem. The reason people are shot to death every day is because we make it incredibly easy for people (including crazy ones) to buy guns and ammunition.
Ezra Klein agrees with Wilkinson:
There are certain tragedies or disasters that relate to a very specific policy failure.
…
But the conditions in which action makes sense — when a policy failure is clear, and when fixing that policy will prevent recurrences of the tragedy in the future — don’t seem to me to be present here.
I just don’t see how either Wilkinson or Klein can come to this conclusion. There’s a clear policy failure – the expiry of the assault weapons ban, which would have prevented Loughner from buying a 9mm semi-automatic Glock with a high-capacity magazine (under the [sound] logic that this particular gun really has no discernible use except as an assault weapon – that is, exactly how Loughner used it), and fixing it will absolutely prevent this sort of thing in the future.
The bottom line is this: no matter how hard we try (and in this country, we don’t try very hard), we can’t get every violent crazy person off the street. We can stop selling them guns. Until we do, we have to stop looking at events like this as isolated. The shooter might have a different story each time, but what they all have in common is a gun.
Last Wednesday, J Street Western MA held a panel discussion following a screening of Budrus (which you should see) at a local movie theater. Almost 130 people stayed after the film for the discussion – overall, quite a successful night. The discussion was moderated by Stephanie Levin, a member of the J Street Western MA steering committee, and the panelists were Melanie Harris and Ira Stup. A wide range of opinions were represented in the audience, including a sizeable number of HSJP and WMCP activists. I stuck around after the discussion and had an excellent conversation with some of them, which prompted me to do some serious thinking, both on the spot and afterwards.
One of the primary justifications for the BDS movement is the call by numerous Palestinian civil institutions for its use as a tactic to force the end of the occupation, the disassembly of the separation barrier, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. The unanimity of this appeal is impressive and grants a great deal of legitimacy to the tactic and its supporters. It also has the effect of forcing opponents, or at least those who don’t fully embrace it (such as myself), to seriously consider the justification for their position. In other words, how can one engage in non-BDS-centered activism while still truly supporting Palestinian self-determination?
This is an important question, one that people like me need to pose to ourselves quite seriously. I thank the HSJP and WMCP folks who opened my eyes to a new standard by which I have to measure my own activism, and I hope that our continued efforts and dialogue push others to do the same. After a good deal of thought, I feel a renewed belief in J Street’s work, and although that probably wasn’t what the WMCPers had in mind, they should still be proud for pushing me to grapple with the topic. Here are my (now newly updated) thoughts on how J Street’s actions are consistent with the cause of Palestinian self-determination.
First, a working definition. Wikipedia defines self-determination as “…the principle in international law, that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference.” I’m going to assume we all agree that there’s no way Palestinians can be said to possess the right of self-determination currently. Therefore, the question remaining is: how do we deliver it to them as speedily and sustainably as possible? Here’s where the BDS movement and J Street differ (I generalize – a wide range of opinion exists within both of these camps, often overlapping, but we’ll work with BDS’ core principals and J Street’s official position on BDS).
The BDS movement is based around the concept that standing in solidarity with Palestinians directly affirms their inherent right to self-determination. On this, I agree. The nonviolent resistance movement has gained legitimacy and power through the involvement of non-Palestinians, and we who believe in it should continue to raise our voices.
But ultimately, our mission is to create a political framework that will become a real and lasting State of Palestine, a state which by definition will be the exemplification of real and lasting Palestinian self-determination. By choosing not to take a position on borders, security, one state vs. two states, or a host of other issues that are the building blocks of Middle East peace, the BDS movement sacrifices the ability to aid in accomplishing that mission. I’m not claiming that a movement must support a two-state solution in order to support Palestinian self-determination, just that it must articulate some political mechanism by which that self-determination is to be preserved.
I too stand in solidarity with the Palestinians, but I struggle for a future where they don’t need my solidarity, a future where they can exercise their democratic rights without the help of international witnesses and activists, in a state of their own, in peace.
The major thing I’m taking away from the latest Wikileaks release is that it’s pretty inaccurate to evaluate an army as anything other than a group of individuals. People all over the ideological map make this mistake all the time, whether it’s the US army being referred to as a “liberator”, the IDF being called “the most moral army in the world”, or, from the other direction, ours being painted as ruthless colonizers or the IDF as an entity hell-bent on abusing Palestinian detainees. Both of these descriptions might be accurate in terms of what the army does, but they don’t hold water in terms of explaining why. And this is where Wikileaks fills in the blanks.
You can train an army all you want, but it’s still made of individual people. You can adopt as complex a strategy as you want, but you’re still relying on those individual people to carry it out. At the end of the day, an army is just a collection of people with guns, and all evidence shows that when you give people the kind of power associated with carrying a gun and serving in an army, things go wrong. It’s inherent to the concept of an army in general. Clearly, individual soldiers can be held responsible for their actions, but to claim that those actions prove that the army is “immoral” is missing the point. Of course it’s immoral! It’s an army! Its job is to fight and kill people.
The sooner we stop conceptualizing our own army as the harbingers of democracy, the sooner we can really grapple with the implications of our military involvement. The sooner we stop excusing war crimes by the IDF, the sooner we can really understand the effects of military occupation. We don’t have to look at soldiers from either as evil – they’re just normal people. But when normal people become soldiers, they necessarily help carry out the function of the army. And we shouldn’t ever forget what that is.
I’m on FIRE today! Check out my Jewschool post on the Forward/BJPA survey on Jewish attitudes towards Israel and Park51 (two great tastes that taste great together!), as well as my more substantive New Voices post criticizing the traditional form of Jewish campus opposition to BDS.
More on this blog coming soon – I’m on a roll with the local zoning stuff…
Busting out a leftover box of matza and a really unreasonable amount of coffee. I will finish this paper if it kills me. #halachmaanya2012/05/14
RT @joeycomeau: The "updates" section on this comic kick-starter have some thoughtful posts about the depiction of women in the comic. h ... 2012/05/14
