To suggest in any way that “Jews control the media” is to risk a brisk tarring-and-feathering of oneself as anti-Semitic. Just ask Rick Sanchez, formerly of CNN, who said some mean things about Jon Stewart, and that “everyone who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart.” I like Jon Stewart at lot and thought Sanchez was a dufus even before the words that, fairly or unfairly, ended his employment.

So, for the record: Jews do not control the media.

Rather, as journalist Jonathan Cook offers in a lengthy and detailed analysis, the Israeli government and allied interest groups censor, restrict, pressure, attack, and otherwise influence media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a comprehensive and effective manner that is only just beginning to crack with the proliferation of electronic media. Cook’s full piece appeared in a recent issue of The Link, the newsletter of Americans for Middle East Understanding. The activist group Jews for Justice for Palestinians posted an abridged version titled, “Israeli control of the media.” Their words, not mine. Even the abridged version is quite long. Here are a few parts you should read, with my emphasis added in a few key places:

Surprisingly, the preponderance of Jewish reporters in the Jerusalem press corps continues to this day, especially among the U.S. contingent. Even a few Jewish reporters regard this as problematic in a conflict where national and ethnic allegiances and pressures are so much to the fore. One American journalist speaking on condition of anonymity, fearing that to go on record would be career suicide, told me that it was common at Foreign Press Association gatherings in Israel to hear the ‘senior, agenda-setting, elite journalists’ boasting to one another about their ‘Zionist’ credentials, their service in the Israeli army or the loyal service of their children. He then added:

‘I’m Jewish, married to an Israeli and like almost all Western journalists live in Jewish West Jerusalem. In my free time I hang out in cafes and bars with Jewish Israelis chatting in Hebrew. For the Jewish sabbath and Jewish holidays I often get together with a bunch of Western journalists. While it would be convenient to think otherwise, there is no question that this deep personal integration into Israeli society informs our overall understanding and coverage of the place in a way quite different from a journalist who lived in Ramallah or Gaza and whose personal life was more embedded in Palestinian society.’

Exhibit A: The New York Times, generally considered to be the U.S. paper of record, and also considered to be “liberal”—at least by conservatives:

His observations had been prompted by revelations earlier this year that Ethan Bronner, the New York Times’ bureau chief in Jerusalem, had a son serving in the Israeli army. The disclosure, which Bronner himself refused to confirm or deny when it first broke, briefly provoked a flood of complaints to the NYT’s head office. A column at the time by the paper’s public editor, Clark Hoyt, argued that Bronner had a conflict of interest and should be reassigned.

The paper’s editor, Bill Keller, vehemently disagreed: ‘So to prevent any appearance of bias, would you say we should not send Jewish reporters to Israel? If so, what about assigning Jewish reporters to countries hostile to Israel? What about reporters married to Jews? Married to Israelis? Married to Arabs? Married to evangelical Christians? ‘ Ethical judgments that start from prejudice lead pretty quickly to absurdity, and pandering to zealots means cheating readers who genuinely seek to be informed.’

Keller, of course, willfully ignored Hoyt’s point that it was not Bronner’s Jewishness that was the central issue; it was his emotional commitment to one side of the conflict through his son’s army service. His reporting was already under scrutiny even before the revelations about his son. Bronner had been widely criticized for his bias towards the Israeli government’s positions, including by the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

The NYT’s other Jerusalem correspondent, Isabel Kershner, is an Israeli citizen and is married to an Israeli. A recent predecessor of Bronner’s, Joel Greenberg, did reserve duty in the Israeli army while he was reporting for the paper, apparently a fact known by the editors but also not considered a conflict of interest. Most of the NYT’s correspondents in the past two decades appear to have been Jewish.

That, whatever Keller argues, should be a matter of profound concern to the paper and readers who expect fair coverage. Even putting aside the issue of the likely partisanship of Jewish reporters who identify with a self-declared Jewish state either by taking citizenship or by serving in the army, any paper ought to want to promote a diversity of backgrounds among its staff. How would the NYT credibly explain the decision to allow only Chinese-Americans to report on Tibet, or to appoint only Catholic Irish-Americans to cover Northern Ireland, or – for that matter – to allow only men to write about women’s issues?

But, more significantly, the NYT’s partisanship on Israel is not simply speculation; it is demonstrated in its reporting. Alison Weir of If Americans Knew, a U.S. institute for disseminating information about the Middle East, has pointed out the systematic distortions in the paper’s coverage. For example, international reports on Israel’s human right abuses are covered at a rate 19 times lower than those documenting abuses by Palestinians, and deaths of Israeli children are seven times more likely to be reported than those of Palestinian children. The Times, like other U.S. media, reports endlessly on the plight of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held in Gaza, while rarely mentioning the 7,000 or so Palestinians – including many women and children, and hundreds who have never been charged – held in Israel’s prisons.

Keller goes on to comment about Bronner’s connections to Israel: ‘How those connections affect his innermost feelings about the country and its conflicts, I don’t know. I suspect they supply a measure of sophistication about Israel and its adversaries that someone with no connections would lack.’ If true, why would the NYT not also want to make sure that it employed a Palestinian or an Arab-American in one of its two Jerusalem posts, or even have one of its two reporters based in the West Bank city of Ramallah? Would that not ensure that the Palestinian perspective was reported with an equal ‘measure of sophistication’?

But there exist more significant reasons why the media might prefer Jewish reporters in Jerusalem. One is that Israel defines even mild criticism of its policies as anti-Semitism, a charge to which the news media are still extremely sensitive. Having a Jewish journalist, or better still one who has demonstrated a commitment to Israel through his own or his child’s army service, offers some immunity from such accusations.

Another reason is the importance accorded by all news organizations to gaining access to the centers of power. In a self-declared Jewish state, as news editors understand, Jewish reporters, especially those conversant in Hebrew, will have an important advantage. This is what Keller is obliquely referring to when he talks of Jewish reporters covering the conflict with ‘sophistication’ and being able to make ‘connections.’ Keller, like other U.S. editors, is not overly concerned that such connections come at a very high price. U.S. news media are choosing to employ partisan reporters who are dependent on official Israeli sources of information for news in a system where the ultimate professional sin is to be accused of anti-Semitism.

This is hardly an atmosphere in which fearless independence and truth-seeking are likely to flourish.

On this last point, a recent post on the Israeli site +972 exposes how major Israeli media regularly regurgitate press statements from the Israeli government as if they were provided by “sources” and not issued by a government press office. This practice includes the beloved left-leaning Haaretz, which Cook comments on in detail:

The biggest threat to Israel’s narrative is probably posed by Haaretz, Israel’s liberal newspaper of record. It has by far the best coverage of the occupation and is widely relied on by foreign correspondents when deciding on their own reports. In recent years it has become much more accessible through its English edition, and an associated website.

Nonetheless, the paper has tended to limit translations of its Hebrew coverage. That policy, sources at the paper tell me, reflects both the determination of the paper’s editors to stay within the Israeli consensus as the political climate shifts rightwards, thereby avoiding accusations that the paper is damaging the country’s image, and direct pressure from the government. The English-language newspaper and website fail to translate many of the Hebrew stories that are most embarrassing to the Israeli authorities, and remove certain details from other Hebrew reports that present the government or army in a harsh light.

Also noticeable has been the paper’s decision to ‘let go’ several prominent journalists and columnists known for their hard-hitting reports. Thus, Aviv Lavie, who unearthed a damaging story in 2003 about Israel running a secret prison where torture was routine, disappeared from the paper shortly afterwards. The paper’s chief reporter, the prize-winning journalist Meron Rappaport, who regularly dug up exclusives from the occupied territories, was made redundant in 2008.

Also in 2008, rumors circulated that Haaretz’s two most famous reporters, Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, both of whom cover the occupied territories, were to be axed. Following a barrage of criticism, however, both continue to write for the paper.

Nonetheless, in a climate increasingly hostile to dissent, journalists like Hass and Levy have become more marginalized inside Israel, even while maintaining their readership overseas. Levy observed in a recent interview that the Israeli media was ‘recruiting itself to collaborate with the occupation project’ and ‘playing a fatal role, mainly in maintaining the occupation and the nationalistic and militaristic emotions and sentiments in the Israeli society.’ Such emotions are on display against reporters who step out of line, such as Chaim Levinson, another Haaretz reporter who has broken many stories about the occupation. In August he was filmed being beaten by soldiers as he tried to report on Jewish settlers taking over a building in the Palestinian town of Jericho.

It’s disappointing when even the most reputable news sources on the conflict are tainted by such practices. To see what news sources I’m reading, you can follow my Google Reader shared items feed.