Cockburn: Israel and "Anti-Semitism"

Chris Kromm ckromm at mindspring.com
Thu May 16 19:22:15 PDT 2002



>Certainly, we are right to point out that the NYT and most papers do
>not have racial diversity.

Yup. But that's more a labor issue than a content issue.

Doug

* * * Hold up. Every year I go to conferences where African-American journalists argue that race coverage in this country's media is what it is because of the overwhelmingly white hue of media owners, editors and journalists. Sure, racism isn't just about individuals, it's institutional and systemic, etc. -- but the fact is that they have a point, and outlets that have more African-Americans in charge generally have better coverage. We can quibble over how much, come up with counter-examples, etc., but I don't think the overall point is deniable.

So why is it somehow anti-Semitic to make the similar point that if, say, Arab-Americans ran the New York Times (and other U.S. media outlets), coverage of the Middle East wouldn't be so virulently anti-Arab? It's not a guarantee, but isn't it likely?



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list