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Jewish World Review August 6, 1998 / 14 Menachem-Av, 5758
Rabbi Avi Shafran
MUCH INK and (at least figuratively speaking) blood has been
spilled over the recent rash of journalistic outrages and
bloopers. The former category includes the bizarre tale of an
associate editor of The New Republic who was found to have
meticulously fabricated parts or all of at least 27 stories in
the magazine. And the discovery that an award-winning Boston
Globe columnist had been routinely manufacturing pithy quotes and
placing them in others' mouths.
While many observers were scandalized by the journalistic
sloppiness and the revelation that elements of the fourth estate
have occasionally played fast and loose with the Ninth
Commandment, Orthodox Jews -- especially those of us whom the
press likes to label "Ultra" -- are something less than
flabbergasted.
We've long been rather jaded, actually, about the whole news
business. We remember how, back in 1986, when a number of
Jerusalem bus shelters were mysteriously torched, the press
reported that the culprits were "Ultra-Orthodox" Jews venting
their objections to ads posted on the shelters that featured
scantily-clad women.
What was not widely reported, though -- even after
retaliatory arson attacks on yeshivos and Orthodox synagogues --
was that only one arrest was ever made: a young non-religious man
who confessed to setting a shelter afire to cast aspersion on the
Orthodox.
More recently, an Orthodox rabbinical group was widely
reported to have declared that the "Non-Orthodox" are "Not Jews,"
in the words of the headline over the original front-page Los
Angeles Times story. The group, of course, had proclaimed no
such thing, but the headline-writer's carelessness was reproduced
nationwide -- with predictable results. The pain and anger that
followed the misreportage are still keenly felt today -- and the
distortion it trumpeted continues to be spread by both the press
and some Jewish religious leaders.
Then there was a report about a policy of separating the
sexes in buses servicing an Israeli Orthodox neighborhood, widely
characterized as analogous to the treatment of blacks in the
1950s American South. It turned out to have been an entirely
voluntary program, designed by a bus company to gain more
religious customers.
And, of course, who can forget the widely circulated account
about Orthodox youths hurling feces at a non-traditional prayer-gathering at
the Western Wall? That story continues to be
regularly invoked despite the fact that the New York Jewish Week
sought but could not find any of the despicable deed's alleged
victims. Subsequent reportage has all but ascertained that
L'affair Feces -- in the words of Lisa Hostein, editor of the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, speaking at the recent American Jewish
Press Association annual conference -- "probably didn't happen."
Such jumping to conclusions and lack of professionalism is
common, and disturbing, enough. More egregious crimes of the
pen, though, have besmirched us Orthodox.
Like the 1994 report published in the Arizona State
University School of Journalism's daily paper recounting the
merciless stoning at the Western Wall of a paraplegic in a
motorized wheelchair on the Jewish Sabbath. The stone-throwers,
the report asserted, were Ultra-Orthodox boys who sought to
punish the man for his violation of the Sabbath.
As it turned out, however, the incident simply never
happened; the writer was subsequently reprimanded for concocting
the tale from her own imagination.
In more recent months, a widely-reported story about an
Israeli rape-victim divorced by her Orthodox husband turned out
to be a reporter's hoax.
And so, some of us bearded and bewigged folk find it hard
not to wax a wee bit cynical over all the sudden outrage in the
wake of the larger world's confrontation with overactive
imaginations, baseless accusations, concocted stories and simple
carelessness.
It's not that we are smug at the spectacle of untrustworthy
people twisting the truth.
Or nonchalant about the erosion of journalistic
professionalism and integrity.
It's just that, well, we're used to
it.
Jaded
The bloopers are perhaps best represented by the CNN-Time
Magazine "scoop" about how U.S. forces used deadly sarin gas to
kill defectors in Laos in 1970, a report subsequently repudiated
by both news organizations.
Rabbi Avi Shafran is Director of Public Affairs for Agudath Israel of America, the largest grass-roots Orthodox Jewish group in America.
7/01/98: Full disclosure