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After Complaints, New York Times Assigns Editor to Oversee Jerusalem Bureau Chief’s Twitter and Facebook Posts

Nov. 30, 2012 9:30pm Sharona Schwartz

After Complaints, New York Times Assigns Editor for Jerusalem Bureau Chief’s Twitter and Facebook Posts

New York Times’ Jodi Rudoren

In highly unusual move, the New York Times decided to assign an editor to oversee Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren’s Twitter and Facebook postings.

The paper’s Public Editor Margaret Sullivan openly criticized the reporter for too liberally posting her personal opinion on her social media accounts. In a message to readers titled, “Problems With a Reporter’s Facebook Posts, and a Possible Solution,” Sullivan explained the rationale behind assigning the editor to Rudoren:

Start with a reporter who likes to be responsive to readers, is spontaneous and impressionistic in her personal writing style, and not especially attuned to how casual comments may be received in a highly politicized setting.

Put that reporter in one of the most scrutinized and sensitive jobs in journalism – the Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times.

Now add Facebook and Twitter, which allow reporters unfiltered, unedited publishing channels. Words go from nascent, half-formed thoughts to permanent pronouncements to the world at the touch of a key.

The result is very likely to be problematic. And for that bureau chief, Jodi Rudoren, who moved to Israel from New York earlier this year, and her editors at The Times, it has been.

The public editor then proceeds to detail some of Rudoren’s social media posts, which became problems from the start of her tenure:

Within a few days of taking the post, she had sent some Twitter messages that brought criticism, and had people evaluating her politics before she had dug into the reporting work before her.

Jeffrey Goldberg, writing in The Atlantic, summarized them: “She shmoozed-up Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian activist who argues for Israel’s destruction; she also praised Peter Beinart’s upcoming book (‘The Crisis of Zionism’) as, ‘terrific: provocative, readable, full of reporting and reflection.’ She also linked without comment to an article in a pro-Hezbollah Lebanese newspaper.” The headline on Mr. Goldberg’s article was, “Twitterverse to New NYT Jerusalem Bureau Chief: Stop Tweeting!”

She also received criticism from those sympathetic with the Palestinian cause about a Facebook post. Sullivan writes:

More recently, during the Gaza conflict, she wrote one Facebook post in which she described Palestinians as “ho-hum” about the death of loved ones, wrote of their “limited lives” and, in another, said she shed her first tears in Gaza over a letter from an Israeli family. The comments came off as insensitive and the reaction was sharp, not only from media pundits, but also from dismayed readers.

Philip Weiss, the anti-Zionist Jewish-American journalist who writes about the Middle East for Mondoweiss, his Web site, wrote “she seems culturally bound inside the Israeli experience.”

Even while reporting on the fighting in Gaza, Rudoren had to spend time to fend off the criticism that post had sparked. She told the Public Editor she regretted using the term “ho-hum”: “I should have talked about steadfastness or resiliency,” she said. “That was a ridiculous word to use,” adding “I just wasn’t careful enough.”

So the New York Times is now assigning an editor on the foreign desk “to make sure that Ms. Rudoren’s further social media efforts go more smoothly.”

Beyond the social media mishaps, the paper is standing by its reporter. Foreign Editor Joseph Kahn describes her reporting over the past month – which includes her coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict – as “exemplary.”

(H/T: Israel National News)

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Comments (24)

Cat_Ion
Posted on December 2, 2012 at 8:44am
If I’m not mistaken the twitter logo is a little bird.
I learned as a child, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, ‘ a bird can’t take back its egg’; so be careful what you say.
Should be the 1st rule of journalists.

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Teaple
Posted on December 1, 2012 at 10:53pm
great face for the twitter. Not so much for the facebook

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MAX0O1
Posted on December 1, 2012 at 8:42pm
ALL AND I MEAN ALL of this just shows how schrewed up OUR society is.
SODOM&GOMMURA ANYONE!!!!!

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billjac
Posted on December 1, 2012 at 4:11pm
Oooops! Wrong picture. That one is Golda Meir as a young woman.

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toto
Posted on December 1, 2012 at 2:05pm
So much for free speech. These elitist idiots don’t even realize they are being had. The silencing of the free telling of actual truths is being suffocated unto death. We are in such BIG trouble. God bless Glen Beck, he is one of the bravest men on earth. Never have there been so few patriots and so many clueless sheeple.

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- Max jones
  Posted on December 1, 2012 at 11:11pm
  http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/51346….just got this, off topic but very interesting
  
  Report this comment
barber2
Posted on December 1, 2012 at 11:58am
The NYT is the Obama Administration’s version of Pravda. The NYT spouts the same propaganda that the Obama Far Left spews which is the same propaganda of the International Far Left. They are just one big , happy family. Very damaging for America’s interests which are not the same as theirs.

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termyt
Posted on December 1, 2012 at 10:20am
Obviously she does not understand the NYT’s reason for putting her there. You are under cover, sweetheart. They aren’t supposed to know you hate them so much.

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TIME_THE_AVENGER
Posted on December 1, 2012 at 3:25am
Someone, ANYONE, from the NYT overseeing their yellow-lefty crap anywhere, regarding assbook and twitless (Talk about trash) about Jerusalem no less, is an accident waiting to happen. …the mind boggles.

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ThoreauHD
Posted on December 1, 2012 at 12:32am
Holy hell. That face could give a goat nightmare’s. What the… liberal women are the nastiest sacks on the planet. How do I unsee that?

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- BehindBlueEyes
  Posted on December 1, 2012 at 6:47am
  I was wondering whether that picture of her was taken while she was skydiving.
  
  Report this comment
- enblazen
  Posted on December 1, 2012 at 7:00am
  There’s a simple answer for that…liberal women are always angry about something and it shows. In contrast, conservative women have the capability to live their lives without feeling the need to change others’.
  
  The saying, ‘beauty comes from within’ fits in nicely here…
  
  Report this comment
JUSTANOTHEROPINION
Posted on November 30, 2012 at 11:01pm
Are yousure this isn’t a dude in drag? I only looked at it’s picture once and my eyes are bleeding. A warning should come with that mug!

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mr.goodvibe
Posted on November 30, 2012 at 10:19pm
As an experiment I decided not to read the story and just extrapolate the story line from the picture. Is this a story about Gargamel getting a sex change?

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The_Jerk
Posted on November 30, 2012 at 9:48pm
Who care’s about these nutty people? Stay out.

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- BlackCrow
  Posted on November 30, 2012 at 10:01pm
  So speaks our resident Nazi.
  
  Report this comment
- The_Jerk
  Posted on November 30, 2012 at 10:08pm
  Black, it’s called commonsense. It’s called loyalty to my country. It’s called everything that you don’t have, and are not.
  
  Report this comment
- The-Monk
  Posted on November 30, 2012 at 10:27pm
  The_Jerk
  
  Isn’t she an American, living and working in the US and entitled to the free speech you love so much?
  
  Report this comment
- The_Jerk
  Posted on November 30, 2012 at 11:26pm
  The-Monk, the answer to your question is irrelevant. I am referring to content and subject matter. Israel is not the center of the world, though by the unbalanced coverage, you’d never know that. Israel is but one, of the many nations living in a cesspool that we have no right jumping into.
  
  Report this comment
- bread and circuses
  Posted on December 1, 2012 at 6:13am
  I am CERTAIN that you know all about cesspools, Jerk
  
  Report this comment
- The_Jerk
  Posted on December 1, 2012 at 10:24am
  Bread and Circuses, wow, that was a really good response for a six year old. Did you think of it all by yourself?
  
  Report this comment
- Harley2002
  Posted on December 1, 2012 at 10:59am
  LOL you stepped in it. If there is anything you need to know NEVER EVER criticize Jews. You think it is bad if you criticize a Black and are called racist? You criticize a Jew or Israel and the hammer will crush you. They have the best organized machine in the world to take out people who criticize them right or wrong. You are now officially a Nazi LOL. Much worse then a racist
  
  I personally back Israel but do have some problems with it. But why say anything? I would be branded a Nazi just like you, Probably will be anyway…. Oh well been called a racist, redneck, Stupid, Homophobe etc. on the blogs to..
  
  Report this comment
- Max jones
  Posted on December 1, 2012 at 11:14pm
  First the JERKS came for the Jews, but I am not a Jew, so I said nothing…….
  
  Report this comment
- Cosmo 1976
  Posted on December 2, 2012 at 12:13am
  hay jerk…..is that your mom looking in the basement to see if you need hotpockets? ….hehehe sorry……hotpockets
  
  Report this comment

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