A Facebook post caught my eye. Honest Reporting–a group I didn’t know much about–was planning an 8-day “mission” in Israel starting three days before Hanukkah. When it became apparent that neither of my offspring nor my grandchildren would be around for Hanukkah this year, I took a deeper look. The program looked very interesting and […]
Laurel Leff, Buried by the Times (Cambridge, 2005) One of the unfortunate casualties of the media’s war on Donald Trump and his ‘fake news’ response is a clear-eyed assessment of the extent to which outside factors influence what newspapers choose to print or not print. As a case in point, consider Laurel Leff’s thorough analysis […]
Jerold S. Auerbach, Print to Fit, The New York Times, Zionism and Israel, 1896-2016, Academic Studies Press, 2019 When Adolph Ochs purchased the New York Times in 1896, he added a motto that demonstrated his marketing genius. “All the News That’s Fit to Print” became the industry standard and before long the Times became the […]
J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (1943) is one of the 20th century’s most controversial books along with Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The controversy stemmed not only from the language which was raw, but also from Salinger’s depiction of an alientated 16-year-old’s point of view—both were unheard of […]
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead The danger of Colson Whitehead’s fictional treatment of slavery and the system of people who jeopardized their lives to transport escaped slaves north to freedom which came to be known as the ‘underground railroad’ is that people will take as historically accurate his description of slavery and white society in […]