JustASC

New York Jewish Week Editor Gary Rosenblatt writes on a newspaper’s dilemmas in publishing letters to the editor amidst a heated and ugly presidential race:

Would you publish information you know to be false?

Seems like a no-brainer, right? But when it comes to editing letters to the editor – one of the most challenging and delicate aspects of this job – the answer is not always so simple.

Take the daily barrage of letters we have received for months now, proclaiming some version of the view that Sen. Barack Obama is a Muslim with evil intentions toward Israel. Do you trash such mail because it is mean-spirited and based on unfounded rumors, or do you consider publishing at least a sampling as representative of the kind of mail the newspaper receives, regardless of the veracity?

After all, aren’t letters to the editor supposed to reflect the views of the readership?

His answer:

I regret that during this heated presidential campaign we have disposed of a number of letters submitted to us about the candidates. But we did so when they were based on rumors or false reporting.

Had we published them it would have only served to misinform or confuse rather than enlighten our readers.

The right decision, but why “regret”? A newspaper should never knowingly pass on false information — nor, if something demonstrably false is asserted by a newsworthy figure, allow it to stand unchallenged or uncorrected.

But what happens, as in the case of some of the Republican Jewish Coalition advertisements, if an argument is based on demonstrable facts but in sum presents a misleading message?

Ami Eden at JTA has done a good job in deconstructing the “misleading and hypocritical” RJC ad that suggested Obama and Pat Buchanan are somehow in ideological lockstep. And in attacking Obama’s “advisers,” the RJC was particularly mischievous in its ad labeling Robert Malley “pro-Palestinian” and Tony McPeak “hostile to American Jews.” Malley may have interpreted Mideast events in ways that diverge from the pro-Israel orthodoxy, but that doesn’t make him an activist for the “other side.” McPeak once (once) asserted , in response to a reporter’s question about why the United States has not been more assertive in “getting the Israelis and the Palestinians together,” that the pro-Israel Jewish vote holds enormous political sway in states like New York and Florida. His implication, arguable but not insupportable, was that pro-Israel activists and voters do not favor an assertive diplomatic role by the U.S., and court and elect officials who share that view. Successful American-Jewish lobbying for Israel has been for years a point of pride among American Jews and pro-Israel lobbyists. Influential pro-Israel groups like the ZOA and Christians United for Israel regularly rail against State Department types or the indiscreet candidate who wants the U.S. to be an “honest broker” in the Middle East. AIPAC’s own literature says it supports a U.S. policy that believes in “working closely with Israel as a partner rather than applying pressure.”

When McPeak describes this activity, it’s “hostile to American Jews”?

But again, “hostile” is an opinion, while RJC’s citation of McPeak’s original quote was correct. Should we have rejected the ad because a reasonable reader could interpret their opinion as unsupportable or misleading?

In editing letters to the editor and opeds, I allow writers their opinions, but I edit out assertions or “facts” that I know to be demonstably false. But clever letter writers, or ad copy-writers, can build a misleading case on facts. Those kinds of messages, and letters, make for the toughest calls.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 24th, 2008 at 10:14 am and is filed under JustASC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.