Bronner Out; Rudoren, In

Picked this up from David Gertsman:

New NYT Jerusalem Bureau chief

Ethan Bronner in an e-mail to Politico explains why he's leaving his post as the New York Times bureau chief in Israel:

My son, who is 22, not 21, left the Israeli army a year ago. And I have not been reassigned. I asked to return. It has been 4 years, my parents are in their 90s and I originally promised to stay only three years, both my sons are there, my wife wants to return to her psychoanalytic practice. So we are coming home. I told the paper I wanted to keep writing. The national legal beat was suggested. I happily agreed.

The reason Bronner had to write the e-mail is because this is how the reporter, Dylan Byers originally framed the change:

Bronner's 22-year-old son was* a member of the Israeli Defense Forces, a conflict of interest first raised by the website Electronic Intifada. Shortly thereafter, former public editor Clark Hoyt looked into the matter and found that, despite the 'unerring sense of fairness' mentioned above, Bronner's son's assignment put the bureau chief in a problematic position.

"Bronner is a superb reporter... But, stepping back, 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," he wrote last February. "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," he continued. "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."
Despite Hoyt's recommendation, the paper did not reassign Bronner.

Byers strongly implied - with no proof - that Bronner was being re-assigned on account of his son. By doing so he kept alive the calumny that Bronner was biased on account of his son.

Clark Hoyt, then the public editor of the New York Times was fully complicit in taking the charge of an anti-Israel activist and giving it legitimacy. Byers quoted from the column, Too close to home, Hoyt wrote two years ago.

Was there any objective evidence to support Ali Abunimah's charge? No...Rather than defending the reporter (as opposed to then executive editor Bill Keller who, to his credit, defended Bronner )  Hoyt gave credence to the complaint of an anti-Israel activist, with no evidence to back it up. Hoyt's disgraceful performance showed the anti-Israel crowd that they could effectively challenge the credibility of any reporter.

So with this in mind, when Ali Abuminah tweeted:

As new @nytimes bureau chief, Jodi @Rudoren will get to move into this lovely property stolen from Palestinians in 1948 http://electronicintifada.net/content/ny-times-jerusalem-property-makes-it-protagonist-palestine-conflict/8705

Jodi Rudoren (nee Wilgoren), Bronner's soon to be successor, responded with:

@AliAbunimah Hey there. Would love to chat sometime. About things other than the house. My friend Kareem Fahim says good things

While Rudoren pushes back on the subject of the house, the rest of her response seems like she's ingratiating herself to Abunimah. In general Rudoren's tweets so far show a preference for critics of Israel...

We'll see.

Er, see this.

And read this:

The position of Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times is one of the most contentious and highly scrutinized posts in journalism, and Rudoren’s stance on Israel and the Palestinians is already being picked apart in the blogosphere.

On Tuesday evening, Rudoren reached out to Ali Abunimah, the founder of the anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada, writing, “Hey there. Would love to chat sometime. About things other than the house. My friend Kareem Fahim says good things.”

She also retweeted a post from a blogger named Scott Campbell, who had written, “It’s past midnight here in #Palestine, meaning #KhaderAdnan has been on hunger strike for 60 days. #hungry4justice #dying2live.”

In response to several posts on her Twitter account, Rudoren responded “Shukran!” -- the Arabic term for thank you. As of yet, she has not posted anything using the Hebrew equivalent “Todah!”

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