The harm from shoddy journalism such as Kristof’s is much broader
Photo: Monika Flueckiger
Two weeks ago, we devoted this space to a refutation of Nicholas Kristof’s lengthy charge sheet in the New York Times against Israel for the “systematic” humiliating abuse of Palestinian security prisoners (“Kristof Breaks All His Own Rules”). The weakness of Kristof’s case has only become more evident by virtue of his subsequent attempts to defend his allegations against numerous detailed rebuttals.
Those attempted defenses largely consist of knocking down straw men rather than dealing with what the critics actually said. (For that, see “Kristof and the Self-Sabotaging World of Journalism” by David Litman of CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.)
Take a May 21 piece by Kristof and NYT’s op-ed editor, Kathleen Kingsbury. The latter wrote, “The Times doesn’t rule out interviewing people or considering them credible because they were in prison or detained.” Of course not. Obviously, one cannot write about treatment of prisoners without interviewing any prisoners. And no critic suggested that Kristof should not have done so.
Rather, critics like federal judge Roy Altman criticized Kristof for relying almost exclusively on anonymous sources and thus rendering Israeli refutation of the charges impossible, and for failing to speak to any relevant Israeli officials or consult Israeli judicial records.
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