FEATURED JOBS
Comments (0)The New York Times’ public editor recommended that the newspaper’s Jerusalem bureau chief be reassigned because his son joined the Israeli army.
Clark Hoyt, who serves as the paper’s independent ombudsman, wrote about the issue in a column Saturday, weighing whether bureau chief Ethan Bronner can be objective, and whether the Times’ reporting can be seen as fair, given that Bronner’s son is serving in the Israel Defense Forces. Bronner’s son enlisted last December for a year and a half of service with plans to return to the United States for college.
“The Times sent a reporter overseas to provide disinterested coverage of one of the world’s most intense and potentially explosive conflicts, and now his son has taken up arms for one side,” Hoyt wrote. “Even the most sympathetic reader could reasonably wonder how that would affect the father, especially if shooting broke out.
“I have enormous respect for Bronner and his work, and he has done nothing wrong. But this is not about punishment; it is simply a difficult reality. I would find a plum assignment for him somewhere else, at least for the duration of his son’s service in the IDF.”
An American Jew, Bronner has been posted in Israel four times in the past two years. He served as the Times’ deputy foreign editor for four years. He is married to an Israeli psychologist.
The possible conflict of interest was raised several weeks ago by the pro-Palestinian Web site Electronic Intifada.
In a response also published in the newspaper Saturday, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller disagreed with Hoyt and said Bronner would remain in his post.
“Much as I respect your concern for appearances, we will not be taking your advice to remove Ethan Bronner from the Jerusalem Bureau,” Keller wrote. “You and everyone you interviewed for your column concurs that Ethan Bronner is fully capable of continuing to cover his beat fairly. Your concern is that readers will not be capable of seeing it that way. That is probably true for some readers. The question is whether those readers should be allowed to deny the rest of our audience the highest quality of reporting.”
Keller said that Bronner’s family connections “supply a measure of sophistication about Israel and its adversaries that someone with no connections would lack” and “make him even more tuned-in to the sensitivities of readers on both sides.”
Jewish Groups Press Obama on Faith-Based Funding
Six Jewish groups were among those urging President Obama to restrict White House faith-based funding.
Twenty-five organizations signed on to a letter sent Thursday to the White House urging Obama to make good on his promise to amend the executive orders establishing the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships signed by his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Obama extended the executive orders allowing federal funding for faith-based social service programs, such as hunger relief and drug-use rehabilitation, upon assuming office a year ago, but said he would eventually amend them to reflect his concerns that they overstepped constitutional boundaries.
“We are disappointed that now, one year after your Executive Order, almost every aspect of the Bush Administration Faith-Based Initiative remains in place—the White House and all the federal agencies are still operating under all the inadequate rules and insufficient safeguards imposed by the previous Administration,” the letter reads.
It recommends a number of amendments, including ensuring that religious institutions using federal money for social programs establish distinct bodies to run the programs; banning such programs from discriminatory hiring practices and proselytizing; and ensuring that they provide beneficiaries with information about secular alternatives.
The six Jewish signatories were the Union for Reform Judaism, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, B’nai B’rith International and Women of Reform Judaism. Other groups included gay defense organizations, Christian and Sikh groups, and civil liberties groups.
Obama Cites AJWS in ‘God’s Grace’ Speech
President Obama cited the American Jewish World Service among groups that exemplify “God’s grace, and the compassion and decency of the American people.”
Obama, addressing the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, spoke of recent efforts to bring relief to Haitians after the island nation’s devastating earthquake.
God’s grace, he said, was expressed in Haiti “through multiple faith-based efforts. By evangelicals at World Relief. By the American Jewish World Service. By Hindu temples, and mainline Protestants, Catholic Relief Services, African-American churches, the United Sikhs. By Americans of every faith, and no faith, uniting around a common purpose, a higher purpose.”