Three days of progress.

November 27, 2023

          As I write on Sunday afternoon, Israel and Hamas are in the third day of a pause in the Israel-Hamas war. Groups of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners have been released in three exchanges and humanitarian aid has begun flowing into Gaza. Critically, the Israeli war cabinet appears to be open to extending the temporary pause. See CNN, Israel's war cabinet has discussed the possibility of extending the Gaza truce, source says.

          President Biden released a short video statement on Twitter urging an extension of the pause in fighting to allow a “surge” in aid to Palestinians. Biden said, in part,

We have worked urgently to surge aid into Gaza during the pause in fighting. We have moved approximately 200 aid trucks into Gaza each day – loaded with food, water, medicine, fuel, and cooking gas.

Today, 13 more hostages – including a fellow American – were released by Hamas under a deal brokered and sustained through intensive U.S. diplomacy. We continue to press that additional Americans be released.

And we will not stop working until every hostage is returned.

A two-state solution is the only way to guarantee the long-term security of both the Israeli and the Palestinian people. To make sure Israelis and Palestinians alike can live in equal measures of freedom and dignity.

We will not give up on working toward this goal.

          As the hostage-for-prisoner exchanges unfold, it is becoming clear that President Biden’s personal involvement at critical junctures helped to achieve the agreement. Biden’s involvement is detailed in an article in the Times of Israel, Behind the scenes of the intense talks that led to the Israel-Hamas hostage deal. For example, when hostage talks stalled over the absence of identifying information about the hostages, Biden intervened:

Unsatisfied with the pace of the talks, Biden called Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani for the first time since the outbreak of the war and “made very clear that where we were was not enough,” the administration official said.

During their “very intense call,” Biden told the emir that the sides would not be able to move forward without identifying information . . . Shortly after that call, Hamas produced identifying information on 50 women and children it said it could release in the first stage of a deal.

          I urge anyone interested in the facts surrounding Biden’s personal contribution to achieving the pause to read the article in the Times of Israel—a story missing from the New York Times on Sunday. A reader (Merrill W.) sent the following note:

This Sunday's New York Times reached a new low in efforts to degrade President Biden.

While President Biden triumphantly masterminded four days of hostage releases, the NY Times decided that a story about Trump’s pardon of one of his criminal-grifter supporters was worthy of front-page placement while our president's central role in the hostage release was not worth mentioning.

If nothing else, this a clear case of deplorable bias at the NYT.

          I scanned several versions of the NYTimes editions on Sunday (online US, US pdf, and NY pdf), and found no discussion of President Biden’s role in the hostage release. The apparent bias in the Times is not in the reader’s imagination. The Columbia Journalism Review published a must-read note by David M. Rothschild, Elliot Pickens, Gideon Heltzer, Jenny Wang, and Duncan J. Watts titled, Warped Front Pages.

          Rothschild et al. examined the coverage on the front pages of the NYTimes and Washington Post in 2016 and 2022 to see if those leading newspapers had “learned” anything from their biased coverage of “Hillary’s emails” to the exclusion of Trump’s “innumerable personal, ethical, and ultimately criminal failings.”

          Rothschild concluded that the newspapers had learned nothing from their sorry performance in 2016:

We found that [in 2022] the Times and the Post shared significant overlap in their domestic politics coverage, offering little insight into policy. Both emphasized the horse race and campaign palace intrigue, stories that functioned more to entertain readers than to educate them on essential differences between political parties.

            Worse, both papers tended to emphasize negative stories that aligned with Republican talking points rather than stories that focused on the accomplishments of the Biden administration:

Exit polls indicated that Democrats cared most about abortion and gun policy; crime, inflation, and immigration were top of mind for Republicans. In the Times, Republican-favored topics accounted for thirty-seven articles, while Democratic topics accounted for just seven. . . .

In the final days before the election, we noticed that the Times, in particular, hit a drumbeat of fear about the economy . . . as well as crime. Data buried within articles occasionally refuted the fear-based premise of a piece.

Still, by discussing how much people were concerned about inflation and crime—and reporting in those stories that Republicans benefited from a sense of alarm—the Times suggested that inflation and crime were historically bad (they were not) and that Republicans had solutions to offer (they did not).

          There is more in the article that deserves your attention, and I have edited out comments about WaPo (for brevity). But the research by Rothschild et al. suggests that the Times and WaPo are not only defaulting to “horse race” coverage, but when they venture into policy, they tend to amplify Republican talking points in a way that distorts reality.

          . . . . which is what happened over the Thanksgiving weekend. Biden’s personal diplomacy helped achieve a landmark breakthrough in the Israel-Hamas war. That fact was not deemed worthy of emphasis by the NYTimes or Washington Post.

          The inexplicable bias of two of the nation’s “newspapers of record” is something that we should both address and ignore. We should proactively spread stories containing facts like those included in the Times of Israel. We should let journalists and editors at media outlets know what we think of their biased reporting. And we should not let their bias demotivate us.

          Media outlets hammered the economy and ignored assaults on reproductive liberty, the Capitol, the dignity of LGBTQ people, and freedom from gun violence. And yet, Democrats were able to prevent the highly anticipated “red wave” of 2022. So, we can prevail in 2024 despite the ongoing bias of major media outlets. We did it before, and we can do it again.

Silence in the human rights community over rape and sexual assaults by Hamas on October 7.

          On October 7, Hamas used sexual assault, rape, and sexual mutilation—often in combination—to kill Israeli women and girls. There are thousands of heartbreaking stories that emanate from the October 7 attack and the ensuing war. Speaking about any particular atrocity always elicits rebukes in my email, “But what about . . . .” So, with the faint hope of forestalling those emails, let me say clearly: The death of every innocent civilian is tragic in equal measure. Period. No “buts”, no “ands,” no “context,” no “Whataboutisms?”  Tragic in equal measure.

          But Hamas chose to use rape and sexual torture as instruments of terror and death. And the human rights community has largely ignored that fact. Indeed, one leader of a campus sexual assault center at a university (in Canada) signed a letter denying that the rapes occurred—even though Hamas broadcast the rapes, torture, and executions on social media and recorded them on cell phone videos (later captured by the IDF). The female director of the sexual assault center was immediately fired by the university with blistering rebuke.

          Sheryl Sandberg and Jennifer Rubin have raised their voices about the silence of the human rights community. See Jennifer Rubin’s column in WaPo, Opinion | Sexual violence against Israeli women isn’t getting enough attention, and Sheryl Sandberg in CNN, Something we can all agree on.

          While all innocent deaths are tragic in equal measure, using sexual torture and rape to kill women and girls deserves special condemnation. And the collateral consequences of that sexualized terrorism against women is manifesting itself anew as some young children and teen hostages released over the weekend are learning that their mothers were murdered by Hamas. And someday, they will learn the awful truth of the way in which their mothers were murdered.

          But barely a word from the human rights community. When it is addressed, it is frequently dismissed as an aside or introductory back-of-the-hand, “What Hamas did was horrible, but . . . .” I understand the boundless complexities of Israel’s war on Hamas and the casualties among innocent Palestinians. But as Sheryl Sandberg writes, something that we can all agree on is that “Rape should never be used as an act of war.” Or terrorism—without regard to context, history, or political aims.

Trump's Thanksgiving rant was not normal.

          As most of the nation was blissfully preparing for Thanksgiving, Donald Trump posted a Thanksgiving “greeting” at 2:00 AM on Thursday that is a sign of a disordered mind filled with hate and rage. We shouldn’t dwell on what Trump says, but this post is important, as explained below. I have removed a racial slur and omitted some rambling passages, but here is the gist:

Happy Thanksgiving to ALL, including the Racist & Incompetent Attorney General of New York State, Letitia James, who has let Murder & Violent Crime FLOURISH, & Businesses FLEE; the Radical Left Trump Hating Judge, a “Psycho,” Arthur Engoron, [and] Crooked Joe Biden, who has WEAPONIZED his Department of Injustice against his Political Opponent, & allowed our Country to go to HELL; & all of the other Radical Left Lunatics, Communists, Fascists, Marxists, Democrats, & RINOS, who are seriously looking to DESTROY OUR COUNTRY.

          Trump was not content to allow our nation to have a moment of peace. Instead, he tried to stir up feelings of resentment and hatred against imaginary enemies on Thanksgiving. Heather Cox Richardson highlighted another dictator who employed similar tactics in her book, Democracy Awakening.

          Reader Jay M. sent me the following passage from HCR’s book with a prefatory note. Jay M. explains that HCR cites a report written after World War II for the OSS (precursor of today's CIA) that was finally declassified in 1999. Professor Richardson writes:

The U.S. Office of Strategic Services had picked up on Hitler’s manipulation of his followers when it described Hitler’s psychological profile. It said, “His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

          The similarity between the OSS assessment of Hitler’s psychological warfare tactic of keeping his followers in a constant state of anger and Trump's rage-filled Thanksgiving “greeting” is stunning.

          Trump's Thanksgiving greeting deserved front-page treatment. His post is a sign of mental illness and fascist intent—a dangerous combination. But most media outlets did not bother to report on Trump's post. Instead, on Thanksgiving Day, Frank Bruni penned a very respectful, very supportive op-ed to the Biden family suggesting that they stage a loving intervention with Joe at the Thanksgiving table:

Does he have a plan for the pace of the next 11-plus months? When he’s brutally honest in his self-assessment, does he feel the same vim that he did in the past?

If he doesn’t, there’s no shame in that — in fact, there’s honor in the acceptance of it.

          A very soft touch, but the message is unmistakable: Biden is too old to run. Would that Bruni devote his talent to describing the danger bristling in Trump's Thanksgiving greeting. Or at least give it equal time. Maybe Bruni will get around to it after the Thanksgiving weekend. We can only hope.

Concluding Thoughts.

          Ugh. That was a rough newsletter, especially as a re-entry into the news after a long Thanksgiving weekend (for some). I wish it were otherwise, but there were tough topics that needed to be addressed.

          I am going to take this opportunity to make a direct plea to journalists, producers, and editors in the news media who read this newsletter. I know you are out there because I hear from you when you feel that I unfairly bash the news media. I occasionally receive mistaken “reply-to-all” or forwarded emails to your colleagues that inadvertently include me. (Don’t worry; I delete them immediately.) (Hint: Do a Google search for “How to remove a name from autofill in an email address field.”)

          Let me start with an olive branch. There are exceptional journalists doing great work every day. I cite them every day. They can’t please everyone all the time. They deserve our support and thanks—and forbearance for the occasional mistake. So here it is: Thank you to every journalist who is doing a tough job well in a news environment that is the equivalent of a war zone of disinformation.

          Ignore my whining and carping; dismiss me as a crank if you want. But please ask yourselves whether the news reporting and editorial stances at your outlet are rising to this perilous moment in American history. Everyone—including you—knows in their bones that Trump is a unique threat to democracy. He is consciously emulating the worst dictators of the last century. His aides are leaking their plans to undermine democracy. That existential threat must be in every story you write. If you must, report on polls or horse races or political infighting but do so while acknowledging that one candidate seeks to destroy democracy while the other candidate seeks to operate within its confines.

          I believe that Americans will prevail against the threat of MAGA extremism with or without the support of a free press rising to the challenge of this moment. But it would be easier—and victory would be more assured—if major media outlets did not treat Trump as just another candidate after his failed coup and incitement to insurrection.

          Imagine if Hitler had survived WWII and then ran for re-election as Chancellor of Germany from a prison cell. Would any story be written that merely reported on polls discussing the level of voter support for Hitler versus his opponent? Or would every story include discussion of his fascist takeover of Germany, his war on Europe, and his attempt to exterminate the Jewish people? Why does Trump get a free pass in hundreds of articles a day that treat him as the legitimate political opponent of Joe Biden? How can any story be written that asks, “Is Biden too old,” without asking the more urgent question, “Will Trump end democracy in America.”

          I have slipped back into offense when I meant to invite you to reflect on the balance and editorial position of your news organization. Tens of millions of Americans are hoping that you will get it right. You don’t have to defend Democrats or Joe Biden. But defending the Constitution and democracy is not partisan. The future of our democracy is partly in your hands. It should be a part of every story you write.

Talk to you tomorrow!