Attention NY Times editors: What, if anything, is the public entitled to expect from a Public Editor?

...In ignoring the public outcry over the manipulative use of a murderer's mother's portrait, and in pretending that the Public Editor had not pronounced on the matter, the editors and management of the Paper of Record fail in the implementation of proper journalism ethics. True, they have not fired her. But if there's a more egregious instance of a Public Editor simply being ignored, we don't know of it.

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
24 November '13..

While Iran and its thwarted/encouraged nuclear weaponization program is on everyone's minds this morning, the recent scandalous hypocrisy of the editors at the New York Times has produced a small flurry of activity that we want to draw to the attention of readers.

The short version of what's happened is that a New York Times news report over the bylines of Isabel Kershner, Jodi Rudoren and Said Ghazali appeared in its November 13, 2013 edition, telling about the cold-blooded murder of an Israeli teenager by a Palestinian Arab teenager. The article itself is here.

A powerful, prominent and emotionally-rich photograph accompanies the story. It happens to be of the killer’s mother.

In the black-is-white world of liberal newspapers, an editorial decision to look right past the tragic death of a sleeping 18 year old who became the victim of a frenzied attack by a younger boy wielding a knife is no longer unusual. But as the Public Editor of the New York Times wrote (see "Public Editor's Journal: Photo of Palestinian Mother Was the Wrong Choice", on November 19), choosing the killer's mother to be the subject of what she termed an emotional and sympathetic portrait is just bad journalism. Or in the words of Margaret Sullivan, the Public Editor at the NYT:

The foreign editor, Joseph Kahn, told me that reporters and editors do their utmost to present news on this topic accurately and fairly. “We are, have been and need to be very attuned to the message that images, as well as words, send to readers on one of the most delicate subjects The New York Times covers,” Mr. Kahn said. "“We don’t always get it right.” The prominent use of this photograph was a case of getting it wrong."

To our admittedly-unsophisticated way of looking at things, when the Public Editor of a news channel with the tradition and gravitas of the NY Times says this was a "case of getting it wrong", that's not some casual throw-away opinion. It's an indictment, an apology and an indication that something ought to change.

(Continue)

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