Clarifying the debate about Roger Cohen
A piece in Sunday's U.K. Guardian takes a belated look at the controversy surrounding New York Times columnist Roger Cohen and his columns about Iran, Jews in Iran and Israel. The piece reports:
A row has broken out over allegations of antisemitism at the New York Times, America's most vaunted name in journalism and a newspaper with a large Jewish readership.
The storm centres on a column about Jews in Iran written by New York Times journalist Roger Cohen and a cartoon attacking the recent war in Gaza.
The newspaper, and Cohen in particular, has been accused of being too critical of Israel and an apologist for Iran and its leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In typical British fashion, the Guardian gets the point about criticism of Israel wrong.
Contrary to what some Britons may think, there is no invisible, forbidden line in America when it comes to criticism of Israel that, when crossed, becomes certifiable anti-Semitism. Reasonable people can argue about what constitutes anti-Semitism, and whether certain criticisms of Israel fit the bill.
I'm not sure what other critics of Cohen have been saying to the New York Times, but my problem with his columns isn't his criticism of Israel (or anti-Semitism) but his bad journalism. Cohen has the right to criticize Israel -- as do I, you or anybody else. The problem isn't that Cohen has criticized Israel too much, crossing some unspoken line, but that he's simply been wrong or duplicitous in what he has written about Israel, Iran and Iranian Jews.
It's bad journalism to suggest the Jews in Iran live tranquil lives, without fear of a regime that has made a practice of sponsoring attacks against Jews around the world. It's bad journalism to fail to provide context about the regime in Tehran. It's bad journalism to take gratuitous swipes at Israel in columns about other subjects.
It's bad journalism to get the facts about Hamas wrong, and to mischaracterize Israeli actions. It's bad journalism to impute to President Obama's message to Iran elements that aren't actually there.
The question for the New York Times isn't whether Cohen or the paper is anti-Semitic -- to suggest that either is true is silly -- but whether the paper is promoting bad journalism by printing column after column that misstate, skew or ignore important facts.
Newspapers ought to have some leeway when they get things wrong on occasion (Lord knows I've made plenty of mistakes of my own), so long as those mistakes are made in good faith and are corrected as quickly as possible. And columnists have the freedom to present their perspectives. The question is whether Cohen is acting in good faith with his Israel-can-do-no-right attitude.
Cohen's recent visit to a synagogue in Los Angeles to discuss his column suggets he is acting in good faith, but the columns he has written since suggest he hasn't learned much.
(As for the cartoon controversy that the Guardian mentions, the Times says it did not print the Oliphant cartoon, but merely provided a link to it -- something JTA did as well, albeit with context).
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Iranian Jews were not persecuted by the government or the people of Iran over many centuries of existance in that country. They lived fairly trouble free lives prior to the creation of Israel. With the fulfillment of the Zionist movement all Jews everywhere were targetted for criticism if not more. This was a result of misplaced anger. The people who did the targetting were upset by the actions of Zionists but confused them with Jews. If someone would seriously and definitively separate the the Zionists from the followers of Judaism these egregious attacks would cease. We have a right to criticise and oppose the Zionist political movement and what it represents whereas criticism or opposition to Judaism is not only very foolish it is absolutely unsupportable under any circumstances.
Excellent article- as a journalist, it bothers me when ‘citizen journalists’ are sloppy, but it absolutely drives me crazy when a professional puts out such poor work as I’ve been seeing by Cohen in particular, and by the Times in general.
And Archie- your argument is that Zionism is the root of all troubles experienced by Jews? Perhaps you should crack open a history book. And a dictionary, while you’re at it (or at least turn on your spell check.)
Not having visited Iran, I have no way to evaluate the accuracy of Cohen’s article—and neither has Heilman. It is surpassingly bad journalism—actually, it’s not journalism at all—to assert what you cannot support. What I will assert, supported by personal observation, is that there is, in America, a very bright line beyond which the organized Jewish community regards everyone as anti-Semitic. That line keeps moving further and further to the right. Which is one reason why so many American Jews want nothing to do with Jews, Judaism or Israel, why they marry non-Jews, why the vigorous motions of American Jewry—so vital to Israel’s solvency—may be no more than post-mortem effects. I shall await with sword unbated the accusations that I am anti-Semitic.
cohen like all the rest of his best credentialed clones let hate rule not their supposedly superior intellect. they are always guilty of shoddy journalism, if they were reporting in such a manner about ANYTHING else they would be jobless. Imagine if they reported that many slaves were happy, treated well and never more productive, he would be writing for the white supremacy sentinel not the ny times
Excellent commentary on Mr. Cohen. I agree that his problem is not that he’s an anti-Semite but that he’s just plain wrong. Of course, it is standard tactic for the self-styled Jewish mainstream in America (the usual American Friends of Likud like Dershowitz, Heonlein, the ZOA, AIPAC, the Republican Jewish Committee and the like) who freely label any critic of Israel as an anti-Semite, unless the critic is a Jew, in which case they are self-hating. Time for a real discussion of Israel among Americans.
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Joshua Pines
03/30/09 11:58 AM
Totally agree, Uri.
As I read his first article on the train a few weeks ago, all I could think was how much it reeked of poor journalism.
Though I readily identified the troublesome likely impact of such poor journalism, I was perhaps more offended by his apparent lack of research, weak interviewing skills and other journalistic shortcomings.