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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (41705)	9/3/2002 12:03:01 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Followup on Khatami story, I just realized the nature of what I have objected to in the New York Times' Mideast coverage. I have several times accused them of "falsifying their coverage". I just realized that what they've really got is a booster's mentality, not a reporter's. When something "good" happens in the bleak Middle East, they want to highlight it, encourage it -- maybe something will grow from the seed? This tendency redoubled after Prince Abdullah's little drop of a 'peace plan' to Tom Friedman, but I'm sure that Prince Abdullah knew by all the previous coverage how eagerly his offer would be received and hyped by the NY Times. "Good" themes boosted by the NY Times 1. Oslo. The most, and the longest. The Times has systematically filtered out bad news that Oslo was not working, was irredemably broken, was and is stone dead -- they still talk optimistically about 'getting back to negotiations.' This involves filtering out nearly everything Arafat or the rest of the PA says in Arabic. (But they've given op-eds to Arafat to profess his moderation, and to the UNWRA head to shill for money and claim with a straight face and no fear of contradiction that the UNWRA camps are not hotbeds of terrorism. And let's not even mention all the op-eds the refuseniks got) Combined with a pro-Labor slant more pronounced than Ha'aretz', the Times gives the impression that negotiations aren't succeeding because the Israeli government are such hard asses. 2. The Israeli Labor party, which most observers (even Ha'aretz) regard as a dead party walking. But any Labor (or other left-wing) rally that gets 15,000 people will get front page treatment, but a right-wing rally that gets 100,000 people gets a 17th paragraph mention, if that (that happened). And then there was the nine-day wonder, Mitzna, who was going to revive the party. Another front-pager on the Times. Looks now as if he has no chance even for party leadership. 3. The Saudi peace plan. Endless credulous boosting with Tom Friedman often mentioned. That the Saudis refused to even discuss it with any Israelis was never brought up. 4. The Iranian reformers and Khatami, who are going to turn Iran into a moderate place. The Iranians regard him as a bad joke (interestingly, this was just confirmed in a NY Times Magazine story). Conversely, the Times has done almost no reporting on the civil unrest in Iran, or the mullahs' use of Arab riot police. Nor have they reported on the mullahs' support of Hizbullah, to the tune of $100 million per year, or certainly not with any emphasis.