Finally: New York Times Cares About Anti-Semitism

The media, of course, tends to report things that fit their favored narrative, and the favored narrative of the liberal mainstream media is that the Trump campaign and Trump presidency has empowered the forces of bigotry in American life.

Of course, since they can’t actually quote Trump saying anything anti-Semitic, they have to resort to that evasive verbal formula.

Thus the mainstream media has enthusiastically reported a spate of anti-Semitic attacks and threats against Jewish institutions.

But similar attacks have happened for years under Obama. And they have gone virtually unreported.

Thus the website of the Jewish newspaper The Algemeiner explains how “Making the New York Times Care About Antisemitism” is “Trump’s Big Achievement.”

President Trump has been in office for barely a month, but he already deserves credit for at least one major accomplishment: He’s gotten the New York Times to discover a new interest in intensively covering antisemitism.

What am I talking about?

Consider the following brief recent history of vandalism of Jewish cemeteries and their coverage, or lack of it, in the New York Times.

Then, following, is a long list of ant-Semitic incidents during the Obama Administration that the New York Times failed to report, or reported summarily with no attempt to tie them to any larger theme.

To summarize: Ten Jewish cemetery desecrations, of which two — one of which was outside the US — were covered by the New York Times. Both times the Times bothered to cover the attacks, the newspaper did so in a way that minimized the potentially antisemitic aspect of the attack.

In November of 2016, Donald Trump was elected president.

In February 2017, there were two attacks on Jewish cemeteries. About 200 tombstones were affected at a graveyard near St. Louis, Mo., and about 100 at one in Philadelphia, Pa.

The Times responded in a markedly different way than it did to the earlier, pre-Trump attacks, which it had either ignored or minimized. One Times news article about the Missouri attacks carried the bylines of two Times reporters and was accompanied by two images shot by a Times-commissioned photographer. The article prominently noted that critics said the attacks “were an outgrowth of the vitriol of last year’s presidential campaign and Mr. Trump’s tone during it.” The Times reinforced this point with not just one, but two op-eds commenting on the attack, both of which were accompanied by additional photographs and carried headlines reaching speculative conclusions about the motive: “The New American Anti-Semitism” and “When Hate Haunts a Graveyard.”

Yes, the media report what fits their preferred narrative.

What happens when something radically contradicts their preferred narrative? They minimize or downplay it. Thus when the perpetrator of several of the phone threats against Jewish institutions was discovered to be an anti-Trump leftist, ABC News failed to report that.

And of course, the mainstream media have been little concerned about anti-Semitism where is is most overt, and most mainstream: on college campuses.

[Update]

Likewise, CNN completely failed to report the leftist, anti-Trump political views of the perp.