The New York Times, one of the most influential newspapers in the world, not only influences its readers but also has significant impact on the news judgment and editorial perspective of other media. The caliber of accuracy, balance and thoroughness in this publication are therefore of particular importance.
New York Times' columnist Anthony Lewis recently wrote that journalists "who live by freedom of the press must recognize that sometimes the freedom can be perverted..." Regrettably this was not an expression of self-discovery and penitence at the perversion of his own op-ed pulpit into a decades-long skein of anti-Israel distortion, falsehood and unsubstantiated allegation...
As in the case of so much journalism today, the words are high-minded and the self-congratulatory claims of unstinting rigor constant while the actual product is a depressing testament to shoddiness and bias - and New York Times columnist Jonathan Kuttab is no exception.
Henry Kissinger's observation of Anthony Lewis, "He's always wrong," applies not only to the columnist's colossal misappraisals of the murderous Khmer Rouge and the Ayatollah Khomeini, and to his inane prediction that the Gulf War would become another Vietnam, but, most aptly, to his relentless misrepresentations of truth about Israel and the Middle East
