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It's been a rough couple of days. Not Quite Perfect's fractal art has been a great pick me up. She's celebrating her first anniversary of blogging.

The New York Times apparently is once again going to restrict even more of its contents. Jumping to Conclusions tells us that soon the Times will be charging for its op-ed columnists. I guess that will kill Doubting Thomas.

It's Almost Supernatural comments on one more person lecturing Israel. His points are important because there are still those (like Yossi Beilin or Gershon Baskin) who know or are trying to figure out what Israel has done wrong. But the essence of the problem is that the PA hasn't changed. Israel has changed tremendously since 1993. Even the Abbas improvement is mostly that he isn't Arafat not that he's made any improvements on his own. It's Almost Supernatural says it very well:

The Labour government tried their very best to create a peace partner even though they knew one did not exist. The extent of the Israeli leap of faith in Oslo was mind boggling. Aafat persistently violated the agreements and the Israelis would complain but in order to create a peace partner they would close their eyes to the violations and proceed regardless. After pressure from the Israeli public to end the negotiations on the basis of the terrorist attacks in 94 Shimon Peres said “we close our eyes, we don’t criticize because for peace we must produce a partner.”

I would add that Netanyahu, despite his detractors, also moved the "peace process" forward despite the violations; he just did it more slowly and demanded improvement. The Clinton administration and the league of peace processors considered the demand for progress on the Palestinian side to be obstructionism.

Michael Freund takes the lesson of Newsweek's misreporting and applies it to Israel:

Too often, and especially when it comes to Israel, journalists pounce on a story because it suits their political beliefs, inevitably tossing facts to the wind and causing inestimable harm to innocent people. And then they rarely, if ever, acknowledge their mistakes.

I still recall the Jan 14, 1998 report in the NY Times about how Israel had made new demands on the PA. There were no new demands, it's just that Arafat was upset because Netanyahu actually demanded that he abide by the terms of the previous year's Hebron Accords and the reporter Serge Schmemann bought the "new demands" complaint. He even mischaracterized the "Note for the Record" that was part of the Hebron accords. Yes the NY Times printed a small correction the next day. As in the case of the attorney who overstates his case this doesn't help much. The sustained objection can't make the jury unhear the unfair statement. The correction doesn't erase the first impression.

Mediacrity acknowledges the damage done by the Newsweek story but defends Michael Isikoff:

Well, I hate to throw cold water on all the outrage, but I have to say: What these two reporters did was not especially unusual in journalism, and met minimal journalism standards. A source misled them. Newsweek may have rules requiring multiple sourcing in such instances. But if only one source is allowed by Newsweek's procedures--well, then you can't go out and hang the reporters involved. The culprit here is a scoop-hungry Newsweek, but I'd hate to see two good reporters get fed to the wolves as a result.

Remember that Isikoff was hot on the Lewinsky story back in the days when it was politically correct to turn a blind eye toward Clinton's transgressions. So he is definitely a top guy in the business, not a third-rate chump trying to make the administration look bad.

My only point of disagreement here is that if you search on "Isikoff, Hosenball and Thomas" you'll find lots of anti-administration articles. They've outdone themselves discrediting Chalabi, neo-conservatives and Rumsfeld. A lot of those articles haven't stood up very well. While I'll give Isikoff credit for uncovering Lewinsky, I'm not convinced of his benign intentions.

Posted by SoccerDad at May 19, 2005 05:15 AM | TrackBack