On balance
So a New Jersey pol who happens to be Jewish and a Clinton supporter (who for the present shall go nameless) is giving us flak for running an interview with Obama so close to the primary election and not having a similar story on the “opposition” (never mind that the same issue of the Jewish News included a full page of statements from supporters of each of the candidates; an article on campus activism featuring separate interviews with a supporters of Clinton, Obama, and a still undecided Republican campus activist; an article quoting average voters expressing a range of preferences; and yet another article talking about the Clinton and Obama camps’ strategies for courting the Jewish vote.)
No, despite all this, our complainant says running the Obama interview is tantamount to an “endorsement.”
I don’t know how my colleagues in the Jewish press played it, but it seems to me Hillary was not subject to the kind of attack that Obama faced from an individual or group that specifically meant to drive a wedge between him and the Jewish community. I felt a Jewish newspaper, and Jewish community, that cares about the truth and the community’s integrity should provide a platform for someone maligned the way Obama was on religious grounds. What I hear in the pol’s complaint is this: “Opponents of Obama had succeeded in spreading rumors that were hurting his candidacy. The Jewish News should not have given him an opportunity to dispel those rumors.” I find that troubling.
In addition, what Jewish newspaper, or any newspaper in the world, would not have jumped at a chance to question a candidate directly on the eve of the primary? We have repeatedly sought interviews with Mrs. Clinton and her supporters in NJ (including our complainant) and quite frankly have not made much headway.
So what do readers think? Did we give Obama an unfair platform? Is “fairness” defined by a 50-50 split of stories? Were we “played” by the Obama campaign?
JustASC is written by Andrew Silow-Carroll, Editor-in-Chief of the 