Some Times journalists have taken issue with my position in this case, believing it suggests that no Jewish reporter could fairly cover the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (or, for that matter, a corollary: that a Muslim of Arab descent could not cover Iraq). Until Thomas L. Friedman was sent to Jerusalem in 1984, the Times would not assign a Jew to that post, a sorry history that nobody should want to repeat.

But there is a huge difference between being a Jewish reporter covering the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and being a reporter whose son has enlisted in the Israeli military. For one thing, as the letter from Ira Glunts illustrates, there is no unanimity among Jews about Israel. To suggest otherwise is to buy into stereotypes. Good reporters bring their life stories to their work and learn both to mine them for material and to correct for bias. But having a son take up arms in a foreign fight you are covering--any fight--creates intolerable pressures and appearances, in my view. I would have said the same thing if the Times had had a reporter in Northern Ireland with a son in the British military there--or fighting with the Provisional Irish Republican Army....

If it isn't acceptable for a Jerusalem correspondent's son to volunteer in the Israeli Defense Forces, would it be OK for him to be in the United States Army? My answer is yes, though the reporter's assignment might be affected by what his son was assigned to do--and where. Though some journalists concerned with objectivity may not always be comfortable with it, readers expect American reporters and their family to be part of this society and to exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. But they don’t expect a correspondent sent to cover an intense overseas conflict to wind up heavily invested in one side--or to be perceived as such--even if it is through the action of a close family member over whom the reporter has no control.

Hoyt is right to reject the odious equation of concern over Bronner's situation with the idea that Jews (or Muslims) should be barred from reporting on the Middle East. The assumption that reporters will naturally side with their own ethnic group is bigotry, and the Times shouldn't try to appease any readers who make that leap. If there is any personal tie to a story that a journalist should not be expected to be able to set aside, however, surely it's having a child whose life or death is at stake.

And some in the media agreed. Washington Post ombud Andrew Alexander (9/20/09) criticized his paper for running just two early stories about the recent scandals involving the group. The problem was that the paper apparently doesn't pay enough attention to the concerns of the right--a feeling shared by the paper's executive editor, who called for more coverage of the group.

Over at the New York Times, public editor Clark Hoyt reached a similar conclusion (9/27/09), writing that when the paper misses such stories, it can "wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself." The Times was clueless, apparently, because they ran just one story about the anti-ACORN campaign, a piece that upset conservatives because it looked at the issue as a political matter--explaining that the videos and talk radio brouhaha was a way for the right to try and do harm to a group it opposes, and to try and connect ACORN to the Obama White House.  This is undoubtedly true. But editors at the Times, like the folks at the Post, offered the same self-criticism: We don't pay enough attention to the complaining of conservatives.

Sure enough, only a few days later, readers would see how this was changing. On October 6, the Post ran a piece on Republicans going after the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, for their ties to ACORN. The union has paid ACORN for various services over the years. A nearly identical story appeared in the next day's New York Times (10/7/09). So the completely-blown-out-of-proportion case against ACORN has now become a drive against SEIU, with no apparent news hook other than the fact that right-wing Republicans are trying to make this non-story into a story--and succeeding.

I guess editors at the Times and Post can rest easy knowing that they're not ignoring the whining of the right-wing.

One that plays itself out via divisiveness--and via, in particular, a false dichotomy that aggrandizes Times reporters and dismisses those who are not. In particular, those nagging, nattering bloggers. (Outsiders! Pouncers! Rougher-uppers!) And he does so right in his lede: There are those "within" the Times, "trying to protect the paper's integrity"…and then there are those "outside" it, "ready to pounce on transgressions by Times journalists."

Garber contention that "such thinking represents all too well the protective, entitled, wagon-circling attitude that so many people resent about the Times--and about mainstream journalism more generally"--even comes after choosing to "leave aside the fact that Hoyt's column vastly underplays the transgressions in question within it":

MoDowd’s, in particular. (After a quick, he-said/she-said summary of the scandal, Hoyt declares: "I do not think Dowd plagiarized, but I also do not think what she did was right.... If the words are not hers, she must give credit." And then he moves on.)

For the record, even Dowd herself admits having lifted lines wholesale from Talking Points Memo blogger Josh Marshall.

Please leave copies of your messages to Hoyt in the comment thread here.