Bonner Gets Bonged

While I was down in Tel Aviv today, seems I missed a controversy over at the New York Times.

Seems Ethan Bronner's son is to serve in the IDF and is that grounds for re-assigning him to another bureau?

The Times' ombudsman is of the opinion that Bonner should be transferred to another bureau:

this is what I see: The Times sent a reporter overseas to provide disinterested coverage of one of the world’s most intense and potentially explosive conflicts, and now his son has taken up arms for one side. Even the most sympathetic reader could reasonably wonder how that would affect the father, especially if shooting broke out.

I have enormous respect for Bronner and his work, and he has done nothing wrong. But this is not about punishment; it is simply a difficult reality. I would find a plum assignment for him somewhere else, at least for the duration of his son’s service in the I.D.F.

The newspaper's editor-in-chief is of the opinion that there no conflict of interest:

...we will not be taking your advice to remove Ethan Bronner from the Jerusalem Bureau...

...Every reporter brings to the story a life — a history, relationships, ideas, beliefs. And the first essential discipline of journalism is to set those aside, as a judge or a scientist or a teacher is expected to do, and to follow the facts...The question is whether those readers should be allowed to deny the rest of our audience the highest quality of reporting.

...If we send a Jewish correspondent to Jerusalem, the zealots on one side will accuse him of being a Zionist and on the other side of being a self-loathing Jew, and then they will parse every word he writes to find the phrase that confirms what they already believe while overlooking all evidence to the contrary. So to prevent any appearance of bias, would you say we should not send Jewish reporters to Israel? If so, what about assigning Jewish reporters to countries hostile to Israel? What about reporters married to Jews? Married to Israelis? Married to Arabs? Married to evangelical Christians? (They also have some strong views on the Holy Land.)...

I do know he has reported scrupulously and insightfully on Israelis and Palestinians for many years. And I have no doubt that if a situation arose that presented a real conflict of interest, as opposed to an imaginary or hypothetical one, we would discuss it, and he would not hesitate to recuse himself.

My take?

Well, all the new services depend on Israeli correspondents who themselves, in addition to their children, have served in the IDF including almost all the baddies at Haaretz. They trust them for stories. They are not suspect as sources.

So, all of a sudden an outsider would be suspect?