Under pressure the Boston Globe admitted they assigned an anti-Israel reporter to cover the commencement speech at Brandeis University by Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S.

From the Boston Globe

Outside Brandeis University’s commencement ceremony yesterday, about 20 students protested the college’s choice for its keynote speaker, Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States.

The selection of Oren, who critics say is a polarizing figure due to his role in defending controversial Israeli policies occupied territory, such as the building of settlements in Jerusalem and the invasion of Gaza in 2008-09, sparked controversy when the school announced its choice last month.

It was not the first time a speaker with ties to turbulence in the Middle East has angered students. In 2007, there was intense debate on campus over whether to host President Carter following the release of a book that was critical of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. Last November, some students objected to a campus appearance by Richard Goldstone, who oversaw a United Nations report that accused Israel of war crimes.

So that was a snippet of the article.

Now here is what the Globe appended to the article.

Correction: Because of a reporting error, an earlier version of this story mischaracterized the group of about 20 people protesting Brandeis University’s choice of Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, as commencement speaker. Many non-students were among the protesters.

Editor’s note: This story was written by a part-time correspondent who failed to disclose that he had previously editorialized in personal Internet posts against Israeli policy toward Palestinians. Globe editors learned of those posts while conducting an internal review of the Brandeis coverage. The correspondent’s failure to disclose a conflict violated Globe policy, and he should not have been assigned to cover the event. The story failed to include coverage of the substance of the remarks made by Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, and made no mention of an electronic petition supporting his appearance.

The author responds at Media Nation

I am the correspondent who wrote the article.

I just wanted to make a couple of brief comments.

First of all, clearly I should not have been covering the story and I regret not thinking clearly enough to recuse myself from this, or metro coverage in general given my past editorializing. I apologize to the Globe and readers alike. The truth is, I have written many opinion pieces before, as an intern for the Globe editorial page, for my school newspaper, a Globe opinion blog, and my role at the Globe basically involved between 7.5- 15 hours of editorial support, news briefs, weather stories and so on.

I am a graduate student with other research interests. As Matt noted above the part-time position I held is often held by students who write editorials for school newspaper, personal blogs, etc … and generally speaking, because we tend to cover weather or spot breaking news, I never anticipated a problem. That was naive, in hindsight, and I apologize sincerely. I do realize now that covering news for a paper that aims for objectivity, given my outside work, is untenable.

As to the Brandeis story itself, I should not have been covering it obviously. I would like to note, however, that I did include two quotes, one from someone who opposed the protests and one from someone who supported them. I also quoted from two competing petitions but one was deleted by an editor, not me. So with only 300 words to work with, I did include two opposing quotes and quoted two opposing petitions. I was also sent to the story too late to cover the actual speech itself. So those issues were out of my control. I was clearly wrong to have been covering that story, but I did attempt to quote equally from both sides.

Thanks Dan, for this forum, and my apologies to the Globe and its readers for not preventing this problem.

That’s an unusual apology from someone working in the mainstream media though I have to chuckle at the line where Corcoran  says the paper strives for objectivity.  In theory maybe but not in practice.

Corcoran was wrong to accept the assignment given his bias against Israel, but the Globe is the real culprit here for not knowing enough about their own staffer who they had assigned to the story to begin with.

The Globe may have issued a clarification and correction, but what was missing was an apology to both Oren and Brandeis. I won’t hold my breath waiting for that to occur.

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About the author

Don Irvine
Don Irvine is Chairman of Accuracy in Media. He is active on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow him @donirvine to read his latest thoughts.