By N. Richard Greenfield, Publisher ~

To say that the Ledger is not a fan of the New York Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief and former Connecticut resident Ethan Bronner is an understatement. We’ve found his work to be replete with bias in favor of the anti-Israel narrative and devoid of any semblance of balance that we would look for in objective reporting.
We were pleased then to read of his leaving this post and looked forward to some improvement in the Times’ reportage from Israel. Not to be.
With the announcement of Jodi Rudoren’s appointment to this post, we find a trail of communications between her and various Islamic anti-Israel individuals that are far removed from anything that could be called “uninvolved.” That much of the available conversations — and that’s just the ones we can see — on the Internet and in tweets are with a network of Islamist functionaries — like Ali Abuminah of the rabidly anti-Israel Electronic Intifada and Philip Weiss of the obnoxious Modoweiss — is an indictment in and of itself. Who one regularly converses with on the Internet is no less significant than who one willingly associates with or chooses as a close personal friend.  It is especially defining if one is a journalist charged with delivering objective reporting.
Also included on this list of individuals with whom Ms. Rudoren communicates via the Internet is Connecticut’s own Mazin Quimseyah, whom we know from his frequent objections to Israel’s right to exist and whose website for many years carried the identifier “no justice, no peace.” Quimseyah is now back on the West Bank, after being denied tenure at Yale.
We’d like to be pleasantly surprised by Bronner’s replacement, but with the encumbrance of her past weighing on her future, this does not seem promising.
Objectivity doesn’t start with what one says as much as it does with the actions of the journalist involved. In this situation, there is little promise of something good finding its way into the New York Times.
In the words of CAMERA’s Alex Safian, who has circulated several of the New Time’s Jerusalem Bureau chief’s tweets on the Internet and also outlines some of Rudoren’s earlier writings, particularly those centered around the events of 9/11: “Rudoren’s recent tweets are no aberration —- more than 10 years ago she was already failing to display the kind of journalistic objectivity that even a cub reporter would know was a basic requirement of her profession.”
Bronner’s departure doesn’t turn out to be a positive in light of the person who’s replacing him. That the Times is putting a person into place in Israel who can continue the newspaper’s bias against Israel is likely less of a coincidence than one might expect.

—nrg