5/16/12
The New York Times' Jerusalem bureau was embroiled in controversy two years ago when news broke that bureau chief Ethan Bronner had a son who enlisted in the Israeli army (Extra!, 4/10). As Bronner wraps up his tenure, a new conflict of interest has arisen: Bureau reporter Isabel Kershner's spouse works to promote favorable coverage of Israel at an Israeli government-linked think tank that Kershner frequently quotes.

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CounterSpin: Kenyon Farrow on NC Amendment 1, Nada Alwadi on Bahrain (5/18/12)
Action Alert: NYT's Jerusalem Bureau Has New Conflict of Interest : Reporter's husband's job is to influence her coverage (5/16/12)
CounterSpin: Gareth Porter on bin Laden raid, Pamela Brown on student debt (5/11/12)
CounterSpin: Jonathan Chait on Paul Ryan, Brentin Mock on vote fraud (5/4/12)
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- Posted by Peter Hart on 05/18/12 at 11:02 amThe details are somewhat murky, but we know the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency is heavily involved in counternarcotics in Honduras. A shooting incident last Friday reportedly left four innocent people dead–including two pregnant women. Questions are being raised about whether they were shot by DEA agents who were apparently going after a boat carrying drug smugglers.
The story has become a scandal in Honduras, as the New York Times reports today (5/18/12)
Residents of the isolated Mosquito Coast of Honduras have burned down government buildings and are demanding that American drug agents leave the area immediately
With a story like this, evidently the Times thinks it can get important information from–what a surprise–unnamed U.S. officials: [...] Read more»
- Posted by Jim Naureckas on 05/16/12 at 11:48 amA new FAIR Action Alert (5/16/12) calls on the New York Times public editor to address the conflict of interest posed by Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner's marriage to someone whose job it is to sway the coverage of international outlets like the Times in a pro-Israel direction. [...] Read more»
- Posted by Peter Hart on 05/15/12 at 2:42 pmNorman Ornstein and Thomas Mann are well-known in the Beltway. They work at big-time think tanks (Brookings and American Enterprise Institute), appear on television chat shows, and write books and op-eds that powerful people pay attention to. Lately, though, it … Continue reading Read more»
- Posted by Janine Jackson on 05/15/12 at 1:42 pmThe New York Times editorially decried the New York City police department's stop-and-frisk practices ("Injustices of Stop and Frisk," 5/13/12), noting that the criterion of "furtive movements" most often used for stopping disproportionately black and brown people is "so vague as to be meaningless," that people of color are treated more violently than white people when stopped, and that the excuse that stop-and-frisk keeps guns off the street is not supported.
The paper's conclusion: "The mounting evidence reveals a pattern of abusive policing that warrants the attention of the Justice Department, which should be using its broad authority to investigate these practices."
That might sound all right, but as I recently wrote for Extra! (3/12), the Times has been clutching its pearls over stop-and-frisk for 10 years, and it's become clear that there is no evidence, no research, no investigation that will move the paper beyond calls for more of the same. [...] Read more»
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