Joe Klein, Thomas Smith, Virginia Heffernan

All the puff pieces that are fit to print

by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

 

In his articles entitled Time Tries Again and Time magazine refused to publish responses to Klein's false smears, Glen Greenwald has been covering the saga of Joe Klein's error-filled coverage of FISA legislation in Time Magazine.

 

Greenwald, Thomas Edsall, Andrew Sullivan, David Kenner, and John Cole have also been analyzing Thomas Smith's fabrications about Hezbollah and Lebanon in The National Review as well as the complete lack of reaction of the right-wing blogosphere that skewered The New Republic for the Beauchamp stories on the Iraq occupation.

 

Here are some of the relevant articles.

• National Review reporter caught fabricating; where is the "liberal media"? (Glen Greenwald)
• In The Tank: Did National Review Reporter Make His Stories Up? (Thomas B. Edsall)
• Sometimes, Americans Are Stupid - David B. Kenner - Opening Lines  
• Mr. Smith Goes To Beirut - David B. Kenner - Opening Lines  
• The Suddenly Incurious Citizen Journalists (John Cole)

Here is an attempt by The National Review to explain itself as reported in MotherJones Blog: "Arabs Tend to Wear Red Shirts," Said the Man in the Red Shirt.

You may have seen that National Review posted some glaringly false claims about Lebanon by a contributor, W. Thomas Smith, Jr. (If not, Thomas Edsall has written up the basics here.)

Now National Review is trying to explain what happened. Here's their online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez:

A few additional words on what the situation with the Smith Lebanon reporting is and what it isn't: It isn't a case of fabrication, as some of Smith's accusers have alleged. With regard to the two posts in question, it is my belief, based on an investigation in which NRO discussed the matter with three independent sources who live and work in Lebanon (as well as other experts in the area), that Smith was probably either spun by his sources or confused about what he saw...[His sources'] claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.

As one of our sources put it: "The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas."

Yow. It's not often these days you see this kind of raw, open prejudice in American publications. And certainly you can only get away with saying it about Arabs. You won't be reading about the Asian or African or Jewish or Buddhist "tendency to lie" anytime soon.

The behavior and self-justifications of Time and of The National Review are disturbing in so many ways that it is hard to enumerate.

Yet a recent NY Times Magazine article may exhibit an even more dangerous phenomenon of using story placement and misleading headlines to create a false public consciousness without any actual misreporting. Laura Leff and Daniel Dor have documented slightly different forms of this phenomenon in their books entitled respectively Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and  America's Most Respected Newspaper and Intifada Hits the Headlines: How the Israeli Press Misreported the Outbreak of the Second Palestinian Uprising.

Virginia Heffernan, who has a doctorate in English literature from Harvard and who is a star media critic at the Times (see So What Do You Do, Virginia Heffernan?), has provided another variant of this pathology with her Nov. 4, 2007 NY Times Magazine piece entitled  God and Man on YouTube. The title has little connection to the content. The article mentions in passing a total of four YouTube video sites that can be considered specifically Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Atheist. She mentions briefly a YouTube video in which Slavs and Greeks debate Macedonia as well as a crude anti-religious YouTube video from a secular Turkish nationalist. Eight of the twelve paragraphs of the article address the YouTube video The Truth About Islam From an Ex-Muslim Lady, which is an anti-Islam tirade from Wafa Sultan. This particular videosegment comes from an Al-Jazeera Arabic language interview, which has been subtitled by MEMRI. 

If Heffernan had put more than an hour of research into her article, she would have found that the Israel Lobby and the organized Jewish community has made Wafa Sultan into a media personality in order to demonize Islam for the benefit of Zionism. A little research into Sultan's autobiography shows some serious falsehoods. (See Southern California InFocus - WAFA SULTAN: Reformist or opportunist?.) Her Wikipedia biography states the following. 

She was chosen by Time Magazine to be on Time 100 as one of the 100 most influential people in 2006.

Mendacity is simply irrelevant when a media personality or journalist recounts what Zionists want to hear as Thomas Smith's fabrications in The National Review also indicate while Time Magazine has no problem with lying in general as the Joe Klein case indicates.

 

To her credit Heffernan mentions that a former Israeli national security adviser founded MEMRI, but she adds the following.

While the American and European media rely on Memri's conscientious translations of documents from the Middle East, critics complain that the organization disseminates only alarmist material about the Arab world.

She neglects to mention that many (including me) often find MEMRI translations completely inadequate. (See my article entitled What Sanabel said.)

 

Heffernan's article hardly qualifies as legitimate journalism, but it does serve as a giant NY Times endorsement or free advertisement for Wafa Sultan, for an Israeli disinformation organization, and for a lot of Islamophobic incitement.

 

Heffernan herself is not Jewish and has never been involved in pro-Israel activities as far as I can tell, but possible reasons for her to produce an example of such poor journalism include the following.

 

She could have been spiffed.

 

In the NY journalistic environment where Jews predominate, she might just find it easier to function by conforming to Zionist orthodoxy and common Jewish prejudices. (See African Americans, Jews, and Islamophobia for a discussion of similar phenomena in medicine and finance.)

 

Or she could be the victim of the Islamophobic media updates and environment created in the NY area by the organized Jewish community, the Israel Lobby, and Jewish-funded anti-Muslim organizations like Stop-the-Madrassa, which has been persecuting Debbie Almontaser and the Khalil Gibran International Academy.

 

The examples of Joe Klein, Thomas Smith, and Virginia Heffernan portend the death of serious American journalism.

 

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