38 Friday, May 4, 1984
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
OP-ED
Stigma
Continued from Page 4
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tively and fairly — warts and all. In
Britain, this was earlier demonstrated
by such solid professionals as Eric
Silver of the Guardian, Moshe Bril-
liant of The Times of London and
Michael Elkins of the BBC.
In addition, some of the best re-
porting of Israel in the United States
over the years has come from other
Jews, especially Jay Bushinsky,
Bruno Wassertheil and Andrew
Meisels.
That Jews can honestly and suc-
cessfully report on Israel is most viv-
idly demonstrated virtually every day
by the fact that the very best coverage
of the country is done, of course, by
Israeli journalists themselves. This
should not be very surprising since the
best reporting on America is done by
Americans. Who knows the country
better than the people who live there
all of the time?
This is also the case in covering
events on the West Bank. The Israeli
press is almost always way ahead of
the foreign news media in breaking
stories there, including, of course,
those most damaging to Israel's image.
One of the few American jour-
nalists to go public in actually recom-
mending that Jews specifically be bar-
red from assignments in Israel is Peter
Jennings, the ABC Nightly News an-
chorman. He made that statement a
few years ago in an interview pub-
lished in the Journal of Palestine
Studies. At the time, he was under the
mistaken assumption that Bill Sea-
mans, ABC's highly-respected Tel
Aviv bureau chief, was Jewish and
should, therefore, not have been given
the job.
"I personally think it is unfortu-
nate that we do assign Jews to work in
Israel," Jennings said. "I think that
the inference or the suspicion, what-
ever it is, would be the same by having
an Egyptian correspondent serving
ABC in Egypt. I am against having a
Jewish or Israeli correspondent serv-
ing ABC in Israel. I don't think that
one can automatically challenge objec-
tivity, but I think it is safer to choose
the most neutral route possible."
That same line of thinking, by the
way, would logically also prevent
American WASPs from serving in
Britain — where Jennings, himself,
worked for many years. Jennings, in
fact, is a Canadian WASP.
The matter of a journalist's loy-
alty to his country, religion, ethnicity
or race — as opposed to his profession
— has recently taken on an added sig-
nificance in the United States in the
aftermath of the Jesse Jackson
"Hymietown" slur. The reporter re-
sponsible for the original disclosure
was Milton Coleman of the Washing-
ton Post, who happens to be black.
Coleman, since then, has come
under considerable criticism from
some elements of the black community
for embarrassing and .undermining
the first serious black presidential
candidate. He has been condemned
some for being a journalist first anu a
black second. Many journalists, in-
cluding some of the most important
blacks in the business, have praised
him.
The leader of the Black Nation of
Islam in the United States, Louis Far-
rakhan, has lashed out against Cole-
man in the most extreme terms. Thus,
he has even made some highly pub-
licized death threats against Coleman
and his family. He has told black re-
porters in general: "Don't tell me noth-
ing about you're just a reporter . . . You
are just a pure chump operative of
those that write your stories for you to
put under your byline."
During the early stages of the
Jesse Jackson campaign, curiously,
most of the major U.S. news organiza-
tions deliberately assigned black re-
porters to cover him under the as-
sumption that they might win better
Friedman is not going to
represent any bonanza for
Israel's public relations
effort in the United States.
access to the candidate. This reverse-
racism practice, which came under
some criticism, has since largely
ended.
Having Thomas Friedman in Is-
rael is certainly not going to represent
any bonanza for Israel's public rela-
tions effort in the United States. Is-
raeli officials and their American
Jewish supporters should be under no
illusions. He will be as professionally
tough as his predecessors in reporting
the news. Jews, in fact, can be — and
very often are — among Israel's shar-
pest critics in the American news
media.
Then again, who is more devoted
to seeking out the truth about Israel,
even some of the more ugly aspects of
its society, than Israeli reporters and
editors themselves? •
In the end, this close scrutiny is
beneficial to the country as a who'
even though it may cause some h
bara or public relations problems in
the short run, especially for a govern-
ment in power in Jerusalem. A free,
aggressive, competitive and responsi-
ble press is the best guarantee for
those basic freedoms so essential to the
success of a democracy.
Let the Soviet Union have its
Pravda and the Arab countries their
house organs. Israel, the United States
and the other handful of democracies
around the world are better off with
their penetrating and often irritating
press.