Free Speech for Reporters, Too
Writer-at-Large Jane Eisner February 5, 2012
The first national conference of the BDS movement, going on now at the University of Pennsylvania, has certainly riled up people on all sides of this controversial topic, as our Naomi Zeveloff reports here.
Let’s put aside for a moment whether this movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel is about undoing the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory or eliminating Israel as a Jewish state. (I fear the latter). But one thing ought to be clear: If our adherence to the principle of free speech means that Penn was right to allow the conference to take place — and I think the university was right — then the conference organizers ought to treat all members of the media equally.
It’s not for PennBDS, or any other self-appointed arbiter, to decide who gets to cover a newsworthy event. Unfortunately, that’s what happened to the Jewish Exponent, the newspaper covering the Jewish community in the Philadelphia area.
The Exponent’s Bryan Schwartzman published a story that the BDS conference organizers evidently didn’t like, complaining of bias and inaccuracy. So even though Schwartzman was registered for the conference, he was told he couldn’t attend anything but the public events, said Lisa Hostein, the Exponent’s editor.
Hostein said that she was told she could send another reporter to the sessions on the Penn campus, but she only has two reporters on her staff, and the second one was unavailable. Besides, that’s not the point. She has to have the editorial discretion to decide how to cover an event, and by whom. Otherwise, journalistic independence is surrendered to someone else’s agenda.
Clearly, by holding this conference in such a prominent and heaviily-Jewish campus, the BDS movement is trying to take a step toward legitimacy. In that case, it ought to uphold for others the very freedom that allows it to exist.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
