Alert
Sourpusses and the Summit: Journalists discarded Obama’s Mideast peace summit before it began
September 08, 2010
(CJR) If by the end of 2011 a meaningful agreement is reached between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority, there will be few if any laurels due to an international press for covering the process with disciplined objectivity.
“The tendency to predict is one of the strongest and most dangerous urges of newspaper reporters,” wrote former New York Times executive editor Turner Catledge in his 1971 memoir, and many reporters previewing the recent peace summit gave in to that urge, openly projecting the failure of the negotiations.