If journalists cannot distinguish between obvious propaganda and reasonable facts, between whether platforming a murderous regime is right or wrong, then we have a much bigger problem on our hands.
Truth Matters, you have taken the thoughts out of my head! Joshua, you are truly a journalist in every positive sense of the word. Regarding the subsidiaries of Al-Jazeera (that is the BBC, The New York Times, and WSJ), just reading Al-Jazeera at 0530hr each day makes it redundant to read BBC, NYT or WSJ geopolitical sections. Al-Jazeera makes it one-stop shopping to know what our adversaries are thinking. In combination with Pakistan's DAWA and Kayhan IRAN, I feel fully read in each morning. Thank you Joshua and thank you Truth Matters, Gary
The WSJ is owned by wealthy publisher Rupert Murdock (who owns Fox) and is considered conservative in large part because it emphasizes in depth financial reporting. I am a paid subscriber because I like their in depth, factual reporting on the US economy and demography and business, the Middle East, as well as financial news in general. WSJ is consistent with the news stories in the Times of Israel that I also read for news on Israel. It has an Israel Bureau Chief, and the other MSMs do not. I disagree with the WSJ Editorial Board about 90% of the time because it caters to the GOP conservatives. Rarely read it now. I do not watch Fox because IMO it is just a propaganda tool for Trump, while the WSJ does not embellish its news stories with Trump Administration misinformation. The NYT is the source I no longer read because of their biased reporting largely on the Middle East, characterized by the false "starving baby" photo on their front page and endless click bait headlines not supported by facts.
"I disagree with the WSJ Editorial Board about 90% of the time because it caters to the GOP conservatives."
Yeah why read people who support Israel while it so much better to vote for The Communist/Islam Party - The Democrats.
It's binary, Susie. You support one or the other. One leads to The Caliphate/Communist dictatorship the other to the Liberty and Freedom. I think Trump is a jerk half the time, most politicuians are but I know he has my back vs a knife in the back from any and all Democrats.
You do realize the Democrats hates Israel, right? Go ask Mamdani, AOC, Tlaib, Omar and the rest of them. They hate Jews too, if you haven't quite figured that out yet.
For me it is not binary. I do not have to support extremists on the left or right. I pick and choose whom to support. I do not have to support the progressive left anti-Israel crowd any more than I do the right wing antisemites, neo-Nazis, and authoritarians. Do you realize there is a PAC called Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI)? Should have said the extremist GOP conservatives, because the old time GOP fiscal conservatives have gone into hiding.
You are in a war - The Muslims allied with the Democrats want us dead or slaves. Democarts and Muslims like slaves - check out history.
You are no different than the Leftist Kibbutzniks who lived next to Gaza on October 7, 2023 who were unarmed and trusted the Palestinian Arabs from Gaza who came in to work every day in Israel for them.
These Jews were all Leftist Progressive Dupes and they stupidly believed the Muslims would change their minds. How did that work out?
They are now all dead.
The choice today is 100% Binary.
You can choose to not vote but then you are no different than the Jew in 1933 Germany who said "I don't like the Nazis, The Socialists, The Communists or the Catholic Centre Party so I'm not voting."
Of course it is your choice, but back then it was the Nazis or another party.
Choose wisely this time. Fence straddling Jews in 1933 did not.
Susie I truly appreciate your response. Prior to becoming an organ transplant physician I entertained a career in Middle East cultural affairs or foreign service. Our instructors taught us how to use print and radio materials to detect consistencies and inconsistencies if one simply read the state media from Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon as well as BBC, NYTimes, Pravda and Christian Science Monitor. Reading these gave all COINTEL trainees a working starting point for the day ahead. Speed reading ability plus lots of coffee made us more prepared to discern valuable from nonsense human sources. And yes I never regretted switching to my 40 years career as a physician and pharma director in R&D.
WSJ is owned by the Rupert Murdoch family. See my response to Gary above. Qatar has major stake in several US universities, setting up Middle East Studies programs that promote a false narrative on Palestine history and Palestinians. So a secondary impact is that Qatar would infect those universities' news content.
In WW2, any Allied newspaper writing Nazi propaganda would be considered abhorrent and ‘siding with the enemy’. The same should be considered today.
Todays’s society is so very different to 100 years ago. Today’s conveniences of instant news, internet, Ai, digital and social media have created a maelstrom whereby people do not know what to believe. Never has the following expression been more valid ..
‘by not reading the news, one remains uninformed, whereas reading the news, one is misinformed’.
They don't work for the Legacy Media and if they do, you can't trust them, because their editors job is not to report the truth but to hide it. They cover stories with a pillow until it stops moving. If it hurts Democrats you will never see it until it is obviously exposed.
List of Real Journalists:
James O'Keefe
Data Republican - Jennica Pounds
Tommy Robinson -UK
Kathy Gyngell - UK
Katie Hopkins - UK
Laura Loomer
Andy Ngo
Edward Dowd
Sam Cooper - Canada
James Howard Kunstler
Sharri Markson - Australia
These people report what they see - source it - investgate it - leave no stone unturned -corroborate it. That is journalism
I am also a journalist. In less elegant words I have been telling people we are in an era of rampant yellow journalism. My professors at GW were former news men and they are turning over in their graves. I would bet the WSJ got a kickback for the op-ed. I always council people to read multiple sources to seek the truth. For the people who only want to know what is "going on", they will only read one, or only listen because they are too busy...And with that the empire of democracy falls to crisis media. Thank you for this article. Good to know at least one great journalist is still at work!
“If journalists cannot distinguish between obvious propaganda and reasonable facts, between a murderous regime and democratically elected officials, then it ceases to be a profession in the service of society.”
If journalists will not. It has to be a deliberate choice.
The quality of reporting has dropped. Reporters are inexperienced, not well trained, subject to political and financial pressure and poorly edited, if at all. Take what they write or say with a grain of salt and see if others are saying the same or something different. Always ask if the reporter or the source has a conflict or reputation for honesty and integrity. Based on years of dishonesty, you cannot expect anything reliable from Trump and his enablers.
My understanding is that opinion pieces (Op-Ed) in the WSJ are not fact-checked by their journalists; they represent the opinion of the outside author being platformed. I have seen other WSJ opinion pieces there that are full of misinformation and lies. The question for me is the Editorial Board would have known that this would be an Iranian minister's propaganda piece, so I would criticize them for deciding to run it at all. Why give voice to a murderous, anti-US/Western regime? Their regular journalists have done an excellent job covering the Israel-Gaza War, always qualifying every Gaza Health Ministry report of war casualties as not distinguishing between citizens and combatants. They also have a Bureau Chief in Israel.
There has been extensive documentation in recent years showing that many media outlets have intentionally blurred the line between reporting and opinion, not out of confusion but out of incentive. Opinion-driven content reliably generates far more reach, engagement, and revenue than straightforward news, and as a result, editorial judgment has increasingly been subordinated to what provokes the strongest emotional response rather than what most accurately informs the public.
First, Op Eds are not intended to be "journalism;" they intrinsically represent the author's opinions, and are not necessarily expected to be factual.
In addition, Mr. Hoffman omits a key fact, i.e., that the Editorial Board of the WSJ published a concomitant opinion explaining its rationale for publishing the Iran Foreign Minister's Op Ed, while also roundly criticizing it (https://tinyurl.com/jbtf6td6). As the editors themselves note, readers may disagree with their decision to publish the Op Ed. However, to omit the fact of their response invites a charge of hypocrisy, or at least irony, as this omission itself appears to represent a form of shoddy journalism.
Like Hoffman, I'm concerned about the epidemic of yellow journalism that has infected once trusted news outlets. But this WSJ Op Ed, together with the Editorial Board's response, is not a cogent example.
Yet from there, Hoffman veers into other realms, notably the fatal ICE shootings of three people, two of them American citizens, within 3 weeks. Meanwhile, MInneapolis' Chief of Police noted that last year his department confiscated over 900 weapons and arrested hundreds of violent offenders, without a single officer-involved shooting. This fact alone raises major concerns about the training and competency of ICE agents.
I find it curious that Hoffman cavils about media outlets, and how much evidence one needs to form a valid view, given the voluminous video evidence, and the overall fact patterns concerning ICE's actions. In addition to the killings, these include invading homes and businesses of US citizens, and/or assaulting them, without warrants or due process, and preventing standard participation of local and state authorities in the investigations of the killings. Add to this the near instantaneous demonization of the victims by Trump, Vance, DHS and multiple other Administration leaders. These are not matters of opinion--they are facts. That certain partisan media outlets have chosen to pretend they are not is the main source of flagrantly partisan reporting in this instance.
All that said, to Hoffman's point, there's no shortage of dismayingly biased, agenda-driven reporting on the part of the liberal media, either. Such avatars as the NYT, CNN, MSNBC and the BBC degrade themselves and their profession with their transparently anti-Israel bias, which has animated their coverage of Oct 7, the Gaza War, and general stories related to Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab world.
In summary, we agree that quality journalism is at a low ebb, with countless examples that make the case. But the WSJ editorials aren't among these.
This objection misunderstands the nature of the critique. The problem is not that the Wall Street Journal failed to explain itself afterward; it’s that the decision to publish the op-ed at all was the error. An accompanying editorial scolding does not neutralize the damage done by granting a senior Iranian regime official the prestige, reach, and legitimacy of the Journal’s opinion pages. You cannot launder propaganda by appending a disclaimer and then claim journalistic absolution.
The WSJ is owned by the Murdoch sons, who are at best RINO's and at worst just WEF fans. The WSJ editorial page used to be great - now it is mostly rubbish except about 4 Commenrtators: Kessler, Strassel, O'Grady, Jenkins and maybe one or two others.
The rest of the paper reads like the NY Times.
They just let Tampon Tim Walz. the Mogadishu, Minnesota criminal fraudster whine on their pages about mean POTUS Trump while he collect s$millions from his Muslim Somali partnrs in crime
I have been a subscriber since 1971 and I am to this day so I have seen quite a change over the years. Still the best newspaper in the US and the only one useful enough to pay for.
So why not edit this column to shorten it and submit it to the WSJ as a rebuttal? And don’t tell me that they would never publish it. Remember, the answer to a question never asked is always “No.”
WSJ subscriber since 1971 and they have gone from thoughtful Right of Center and open minded to ideas to Left of Center and closed minded half the time. The WSJ is still the best newspaper in the US but that is not saying much.
You research and write 1,000 times better than they do!!!
"Poor judgment on behalf of ICE agents, for example, does not mean America does not have an illegal immigration problem that should be addressed."
I don't know of anybody who would seriously make this argument. Everybody that I've tuned into who seems to align center left recognizes the border has been a problem, it needs to be resolved, but the way its being resolved currently has been proven to be dehumanizing, unethical, and illegal. I don't see why those two realities can't be held in tension. Is illegal immigration a problem? Yes. Is a lot of the narrative about illegal immigration total fearmongering propaganda? Yes. Does that problem need to be solved? Yes. Does the need for this problem to be solved warrant or justify the mandates and behavior of not only a few ICE agents, but case upon case upon case of ICE agents? No, it does not.
Stop mealy-mouthing. There's still way too many caveats and modifiers in criticism of journalism by journalists. Still too timid to lambast their utter unprofessionalism. They are a disgrace and should be shunned. Get real.
"much of Western media has pretended to care deeply about Gaza . . . yet . . . it spits in the face of Iranian protesters by publishing. . . propaganda from Iran’s foreign minister. I am genuinely struggling to understand the logic, or the moral framework, that allows both positions to coexist."
No great mystery to it. In a nutshell, it is "Lawrence of Arabia" versus "Oliver Twist": Orientalism versus Antisemitism.
More specifically, on the one hand it is the image of the dashing, romantic, Omar Sharif, he of the dark, smoldering good looks, whose character fights the noble cause of Arab Nationalism against oppressive British Imperialism. On the other, we have Dickens' character Fagan whom he describes as hideous and reptilian, reflecting his inner corruption. Just in case the readers missed the point, Dickens referred to Fagan as "the Jew" 250 times in the original text.
To visualize what is going on, imagine before us a world famous picture. In the foreground we see the noble Arab warrior Fighting the Good Fight against injustice. He stands out in brilliant colors made more vivid by the cast shadows of scheming Jews always threatening to undo his good.
"Why, then, do so many people continue to treat every headline as indisputable fact — as though reading a few words automatically makes a story true?"
For the same reason we buy certain goods, follow certain fashions, elect certain politicians: because very skillful PR and Advertising cleverly manipulate us into doing so. The original legislators of Free Speech who claimed that truth would prevail over publicly broadcast odious ideas were unaware of the power PR and Advertising had to control opinions and behavior.
"When I was in journalism school, we were taught to pursue every side of a story and to scrutinize every claim. "
Most news stories (text and images) carried by print and electronic media are routinely downloaded from major feeds like Reuters or Associated Press. The print and electronic media editors cover their heinies by claiming they don't have the time, personnel, or money to research every single story on the wire. "So trust us to give you the truth," they say.
"Tragedy is no longer something to be understood; it is something to be instrumentalized. "
Perhaps a more accurate description of the phenomenon is not "instrumentalized" but cynically exploited.
"One incident becomes an indictment of an entire system, nation, or idea."
Depending on what side of the ideological divide you are standing. If you are promoting one version of reality to the exclusion of any other, then citing one example as conclusive proof is to commit the logical Fallacy of the Lonely Fact. If give several examples is merely to commit the fallacy of Hasty Generalization. Personally, I would call it the fallacy of selective perception.
"the media’s tantrum machine doesn’t just shape what we consume; it reshapes what we think, who we trust, and how we engage with the societies around us."
Societies composed of many racist, religions, ethnicities, cultures, and nationalities are not melting pots but mosaics. They survive because new arrivals left the tribal hatreds behind them. As Abraham Lincoln astutely observed in an 1858 speech, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Through their divisive reporting, the media is wittingly or not promoting civil strife. If left to continue, the media may sow the wind, but we, the bystanders, will reap the whirlwind.
“free speech absolutism.”
Ain't no such thing. Would love to see the reaction of those advocating for it if someone told their boss you were stealing from the company when you weren't, or informing your spouse that you were cheating on them when you weren't, or a witness on the stand testifying under oath that you committing the offence when you didn't. You might cry not "Free Speech" but "Licentious Speech" which covers many other abuses of speech as well.
Exactly why I follow you and ignore MSM. You are a journalist. Thank you Josh.
Truth Matters, you have taken the thoughts out of my head! Joshua, you are truly a journalist in every positive sense of the word. Regarding the subsidiaries of Al-Jazeera (that is the BBC, The New York Times, and WSJ), just reading Al-Jazeera at 0530hr each day makes it redundant to read BBC, NYT or WSJ geopolitical sections. Al-Jazeera makes it one-stop shopping to know what our adversaries are thinking. In combination with Pakistan's DAWA and Kayhan IRAN, I feel fully read in each morning. Thank you Joshua and thank you Truth Matters, Gary
The WSJ is owned by wealthy publisher Rupert Murdock (who owns Fox) and is considered conservative in large part because it emphasizes in depth financial reporting. I am a paid subscriber because I like their in depth, factual reporting on the US economy and demography and business, the Middle East, as well as financial news in general. WSJ is consistent with the news stories in the Times of Israel that I also read for news on Israel. It has an Israel Bureau Chief, and the other MSMs do not. I disagree with the WSJ Editorial Board about 90% of the time because it caters to the GOP conservatives. Rarely read it now. I do not watch Fox because IMO it is just a propaganda tool for Trump, while the WSJ does not embellish its news stories with Trump Administration misinformation. The NYT is the source I no longer read because of their biased reporting largely on the Middle East, characterized by the false "starving baby" photo on their front page and endless click bait headlines not supported by facts.
"I disagree with the WSJ Editorial Board about 90% of the time because it caters to the GOP conservatives."
Yeah why read people who support Israel while it so much better to vote for The Communist/Islam Party - The Democrats.
It's binary, Susie. You support one or the other. One leads to The Caliphate/Communist dictatorship the other to the Liberty and Freedom. I think Trump is a jerk half the time, most politicuians are but I know he has my back vs a knife in the back from any and all Democrats.
You do realize the Democrats hates Israel, right? Go ask Mamdani, AOC, Tlaib, Omar and the rest of them. They hate Jews too, if you haven't quite figured that out yet.
For me it is not binary. I do not have to support extremists on the left or right. I pick and choose whom to support. I do not have to support the progressive left anti-Israel crowd any more than I do the right wing antisemites, neo-Nazis, and authoritarians. Do you realize there is a PAC called Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI)? Should have said the extremist GOP conservatives, because the old time GOP fiscal conservatives have gone into hiding.
You are in a war - The Muslims allied with the Democrats want us dead or slaves. Democarts and Muslims like slaves - check out history.
You are no different than the Leftist Kibbutzniks who lived next to Gaza on October 7, 2023 who were unarmed and trusted the Palestinian Arabs from Gaza who came in to work every day in Israel for them.
These Jews were all Leftist Progressive Dupes and they stupidly believed the Muslims would change their minds. How did that work out?
They are now all dead.
The choice today is 100% Binary.
You can choose to not vote but then you are no different than the Jew in 1933 Germany who said "I don't like the Nazis, The Socialists, The Communists or the Catholic Centre Party so I'm not voting."
Of course it is your choice, but back then it was the Nazis or another party.
Choose wisely this time. Fence straddling Jews in 1933 did not.
John you are making my afternoon brother. Greatly appreciate your messages. Gary
Thanks - take care.
Susie I truly appreciate your response. Prior to becoming an organ transplant physician I entertained a career in Middle East cultural affairs or foreign service. Our instructors taught us how to use print and radio materials to detect consistencies and inconsistencies if one simply read the state media from Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon as well as BBC, NYTimes, Pravda and Christian Science Monitor. Reading these gave all COINTEL trainees a working starting point for the day ahead. Speed reading ability plus lots of coffee made us more prepared to discern valuable from nonsense human sources. And yes I never regretted switching to my 40 years career as a physician and pharma director in R&D.
I must have missed it. When did an Islamist regime purchase the WSJ?
I'm betting qatar has a stake in it if not owning it outright.
WSJ is owned by the Rupert Murdoch family. See my response to Gary above. Qatar has major stake in several US universities, setting up Middle East Studies programs that promote a false narrative on Palestine history and Palestinians. So a secondary impact is that Qatar would infect those universities' news content.
In WW2, any Allied newspaper writing Nazi propaganda would be considered abhorrent and ‘siding with the enemy’. The same should be considered today.
Todays’s society is so very different to 100 years ago. Today’s conveniences of instant news, internet, Ai, digital and social media have created a maelstrom whereby people do not know what to believe. Never has the following expression been more valid ..
‘by not reading the news, one remains uninformed, whereas reading the news, one is misinformed’.
Journalists?
They don't work for the Legacy Media and if they do, you can't trust them, because their editors job is not to report the truth but to hide it. They cover stories with a pillow until it stops moving. If it hurts Democrats you will never see it until it is obviously exposed.
List of Real Journalists:
James O'Keefe
Data Republican - Jennica Pounds
Tommy Robinson -UK
Kathy Gyngell - UK
Katie Hopkins - UK
Laura Loomer
Andy Ngo
Edward Dowd
Sam Cooper - Canada
James Howard Kunstler
Sharri Markson - Australia
These people report what they see - source it - investgate it - leave no stone unturned -corroborate it. That is journalism
Well written piece, sir! Thank you!
I am also a journalist. In less elegant words I have been telling people we are in an era of rampant yellow journalism. My professors at GW were former news men and they are turning over in their graves. I would bet the WSJ got a kickback for the op-ed. I always council people to read multiple sources to seek the truth. For the people who only want to know what is "going on", they will only read one, or only listen because they are too busy...And with that the empire of democracy falls to crisis media. Thank you for this article. Good to know at least one great journalist is still at work!
great comment
“If journalists cannot distinguish between obvious propaganda and reasonable facts, between a murderous regime and democratically elected officials, then it ceases to be a profession in the service of society.”
If journalists will not. It has to be a deliberate choice.
Great work.
The quality of reporting has dropped. Reporters are inexperienced, not well trained, subject to political and financial pressure and poorly edited, if at all. Take what they write or say with a grain of salt and see if others are saying the same or something different. Always ask if the reporter or the source has a conflict or reputation for honesty and integrity. Based on years of dishonesty, you cannot expect anything reliable from Trump and his enablers.
You just proved the authors point nicely, 😁
And you can expect the same level of dishonesty from the mainstream media.
My understanding is that opinion pieces (Op-Ed) in the WSJ are not fact-checked by their journalists; they represent the opinion of the outside author being platformed. I have seen other WSJ opinion pieces there that are full of misinformation and lies. The question for me is the Editorial Board would have known that this would be an Iranian minister's propaganda piece, so I would criticize them for deciding to run it at all. Why give voice to a murderous, anti-US/Western regime? Their regular journalists have done an excellent job covering the Israel-Gaza War, always qualifying every Gaza Health Ministry report of war casualties as not distinguishing between citizens and combatants. They also have a Bureau Chief in Israel.
There has been extensive documentation in recent years showing that many media outlets have intentionally blurred the line between reporting and opinion, not out of confusion but out of incentive. Opinion-driven content reliably generates far more reach, engagement, and revenue than straightforward news, and as a result, editorial judgment has increasingly been subordinated to what provokes the strongest emotional response rather than what most accurately informs the public.
I find this essay disingenuous on several counts.
First, Op Eds are not intended to be "journalism;" they intrinsically represent the author's opinions, and are not necessarily expected to be factual.
In addition, Mr. Hoffman omits a key fact, i.e., that the Editorial Board of the WSJ published a concomitant opinion explaining its rationale for publishing the Iran Foreign Minister's Op Ed, while also roundly criticizing it (https://tinyurl.com/jbtf6td6). As the editors themselves note, readers may disagree with their decision to publish the Op Ed. However, to omit the fact of their response invites a charge of hypocrisy, or at least irony, as this omission itself appears to represent a form of shoddy journalism.
Like Hoffman, I'm concerned about the epidemic of yellow journalism that has infected once trusted news outlets. But this WSJ Op Ed, together with the Editorial Board's response, is not a cogent example.
Yet from there, Hoffman veers into other realms, notably the fatal ICE shootings of three people, two of them American citizens, within 3 weeks. Meanwhile, MInneapolis' Chief of Police noted that last year his department confiscated over 900 weapons and arrested hundreds of violent offenders, without a single officer-involved shooting. This fact alone raises major concerns about the training and competency of ICE agents.
I find it curious that Hoffman cavils about media outlets, and how much evidence one needs to form a valid view, given the voluminous video evidence, and the overall fact patterns concerning ICE's actions. In addition to the killings, these include invading homes and businesses of US citizens, and/or assaulting them, without warrants or due process, and preventing standard participation of local and state authorities in the investigations of the killings. Add to this the near instantaneous demonization of the victims by Trump, Vance, DHS and multiple other Administration leaders. These are not matters of opinion--they are facts. That certain partisan media outlets have chosen to pretend they are not is the main source of flagrantly partisan reporting in this instance.
All that said, to Hoffman's point, there's no shortage of dismayingly biased, agenda-driven reporting on the part of the liberal media, either. Such avatars as the NYT, CNN, MSNBC and the BBC degrade themselves and their profession with their transparently anti-Israel bias, which has animated their coverage of Oct 7, the Gaza War, and general stories related to Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab world.
In summary, we agree that quality journalism is at a low ebb, with countless examples that make the case. But the WSJ editorials aren't among these.
This objection misunderstands the nature of the critique. The problem is not that the Wall Street Journal failed to explain itself afterward; it’s that the decision to publish the op-ed at all was the error. An accompanying editorial scolding does not neutralize the damage done by granting a senior Iranian regime official the prestige, reach, and legitimacy of the Journal’s opinion pages. You cannot launder propaganda by appending a disclaimer and then claim journalistic absolution.
The WSJ is owned by the Murdoch sons, who are at best RINO's and at worst just WEF fans. The WSJ editorial page used to be great - now it is mostly rubbish except about 4 Commenrtators: Kessler, Strassel, O'Grady, Jenkins and maybe one or two others.
The rest of the paper reads like the NY Times.
They just let Tampon Tim Walz. the Mogadishu, Minnesota criminal fraudster whine on their pages about mean POTUS Trump while he collect s$millions from his Muslim Somali partnrs in crime
I have been a subscriber since 1971 and I am to this day so I have seen quite a change over the years. Still the best newspaper in the US and the only one useful enough to pay for.
Minnesota Democrats hate ICE because they are deporting their voters.
Do I gather correctly you've canvassed the 2,000 or so Minnesota democratic voters you'd need to validate your assertion?
You gather that I'm 100% right and you don't like it.
Thank you for the link to the WSJ Editorial Board's reasoning for publishing the Iranian Foreign Minister's Op Ed.
So why not edit this column to shorten it and submit it to the WSJ as a rebuttal? And don’t tell me that they would never publish it. Remember, the answer to a question never asked is always “No.”
The WSJ is now as much an antisemitic left-wing piece of garbage as the NYT. Wasn't it once conservative if I recall correctly?
Laura,
WSJ subscriber since 1971 and they have gone from thoughtful Right of Center and open minded to ideas to Left of Center and closed minded half the time. The WSJ is still the best newspaper in the US but that is not saying much.
You research and write 1,000 times better than they do!!!
"Poor judgment on behalf of ICE agents, for example, does not mean America does not have an illegal immigration problem that should be addressed."
I don't know of anybody who would seriously make this argument. Everybody that I've tuned into who seems to align center left recognizes the border has been a problem, it needs to be resolved, but the way its being resolved currently has been proven to be dehumanizing, unethical, and illegal. I don't see why those two realities can't be held in tension. Is illegal immigration a problem? Yes. Is a lot of the narrative about illegal immigration total fearmongering propaganda? Yes. Does that problem need to be solved? Yes. Does the need for this problem to be solved warrant or justify the mandates and behavior of not only a few ICE agents, but case upon case upon case of ICE agents? No, it does not.
Food for thought.
Stop mealy-mouthing. There's still way too many caveats and modifiers in criticism of journalism by journalists. Still too timid to lambast their utter unprofessionalism. They are a disgrace and should be shunned. Get real.
"much of Western media has pretended to care deeply about Gaza . . . yet . . . it spits in the face of Iranian protesters by publishing. . . propaganda from Iran’s foreign minister. I am genuinely struggling to understand the logic, or the moral framework, that allows both positions to coexist."
No great mystery to it. In a nutshell, it is "Lawrence of Arabia" versus "Oliver Twist": Orientalism versus Antisemitism.
More specifically, on the one hand it is the image of the dashing, romantic, Omar Sharif, he of the dark, smoldering good looks, whose character fights the noble cause of Arab Nationalism against oppressive British Imperialism. On the other, we have Dickens' character Fagan whom he describes as hideous and reptilian, reflecting his inner corruption. Just in case the readers missed the point, Dickens referred to Fagan as "the Jew" 250 times in the original text.
To visualize what is going on, imagine before us a world famous picture. In the foreground we see the noble Arab warrior Fighting the Good Fight against injustice. He stands out in brilliant colors made more vivid by the cast shadows of scheming Jews always threatening to undo his good.
"Why, then, do so many people continue to treat every headline as indisputable fact — as though reading a few words automatically makes a story true?"
For the same reason we buy certain goods, follow certain fashions, elect certain politicians: because very skillful PR and Advertising cleverly manipulate us into doing so. The original legislators of Free Speech who claimed that truth would prevail over publicly broadcast odious ideas were unaware of the power PR and Advertising had to control opinions and behavior.
"When I was in journalism school, we were taught to pursue every side of a story and to scrutinize every claim. "
Most news stories (text and images) carried by print and electronic media are routinely downloaded from major feeds like Reuters or Associated Press. The print and electronic media editors cover their heinies by claiming they don't have the time, personnel, or money to research every single story on the wire. "So trust us to give you the truth," they say.
"Tragedy is no longer something to be understood; it is something to be instrumentalized. "
Perhaps a more accurate description of the phenomenon is not "instrumentalized" but cynically exploited.
"One incident becomes an indictment of an entire system, nation, or idea."
Depending on what side of the ideological divide you are standing. If you are promoting one version of reality to the exclusion of any other, then citing one example as conclusive proof is to commit the logical Fallacy of the Lonely Fact. If give several examples is merely to commit the fallacy of Hasty Generalization. Personally, I would call it the fallacy of selective perception.
"the media’s tantrum machine doesn’t just shape what we consume; it reshapes what we think, who we trust, and how we engage with the societies around us."
Societies composed of many racist, religions, ethnicities, cultures, and nationalities are not melting pots but mosaics. They survive because new arrivals left the tribal hatreds behind them. As Abraham Lincoln astutely observed in an 1858 speech, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Through their divisive reporting, the media is wittingly or not promoting civil strife. If left to continue, the media may sow the wind, but we, the bystanders, will reap the whirlwind.
“free speech absolutism.”
Ain't no such thing. Would love to see the reaction of those advocating for it if someone told their boss you were stealing from the company when you weren't, or informing your spouse that you were cheating on them when you weren't, or a witness on the stand testifying under oath that you committing the offence when you didn't. You might cry not "Free Speech" but "Licentious Speech" which covers many other abuses of speech as well.