Book on Times' Editor Helps Explain Media Bias for Israel

By Alfred M. Lilienthal

Fit to Print A.M. Rosenthal and His Times by Joseph C. Goulden is another of these rags to riches and power tales of one of the most influential journalists of our times. Indisputably, no nongovernmental institution has molded American foreign policy to a greater extent than has The New York Times. And equally, no one has been more responsible for the present-day "Israelism" of this most powerful of all papers than Abe Rosenthal.

It was not always so. In 1946, Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger publicly declared: "I dislike the coercive methods of Zionists who in this country have not hesitated to use economic means to silence persons who hue different views. I object to attempts at character assassination of those who do not agree with them."

In the same year, Sulzberger told a congregation of fellow Jews in Chattanooga, TN: "I cannot rid myself of the feeling that the unfortunate Jews of Europe's DP camps are helpless hostages for whom statehood has been made the only ransom."

During the ferment that preceded the 1947 UN partition of Palestine and the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel, the elder Sulzberger cancelled an advertisement submitted by the "American League for a Free Palestine:' a US alter ego and fund raiser for the terrorist Menachem Begin-led Irgun Zvai Leumi. The action, prompted by Sulzberger's personal convictions, brought him into confrontation with American Zionists and led to a costly boycott of The New York Times by department store advertisers. The boycott was referred to as the "frightening experience" by Times executives, who locked away all of the correspondence referring to it in a safe in the Times' offices. I was not permitted access to it when I called upon Arthur Hays Sulzberger in the early 1950s, while researching my book, What Price Israel?

Tilting Toward Israel

Under son "Punch" Sulzberger, who did not wish to become involved in the controversy over Israel, it was relatively simple for the ambitious Rosenthal, who started at the Times as a $12-a-week reporter, rising swiftly from correspondent at the UN to managing editor and then executive editor, to move the paper into its pro-Israel, if not pro-Zionist, position. Rosenthal's near-total support of "the sole working democracy in the Middle East" perfectly fitted the liberal perspective of the Times.

Although he may have been personally stirred by the bust in the Times lobby of founder Adolf Ochs and its inscription: "To give the news impartially without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect or interest involved," Rosenthal scarcely permitted this to guide the paper's extensive coverage of the Middle East conflict.

Goulden's book is devoted largely to internal politics at the Times and it deals only in a limited way with the Middle East, upon which Goulden's own viewpoints are not clear. Nevertheless, the book's insights on Rosenthal's personality shed light on the Times' shielding of Israel from journalistic scrutiny, and the whole process of American media bias regarding the Middle East.

Rosenthal married a Catholic and brought up his children with no formal Jewish education. One became a Buddhist. Although for Rosenthal Judaism as a religion had little appeal, this book makes it clear that "as a moral and political force, as exemplified by Israel, it was to be of considerable import in his later professional life."

On the path to success, Rosenthal had to overcome many obstacles which left deep psychological marks. A skinny youth with thick glasses who hobbled about with the help of a cane as a result of osteomyelitis, he came from an extremely poor Russian family whose name originally was Shipiatsky. This background put him at a great disadvantage in his joustings with the paper's German-Jewish owners-Punch, his sisters, and cousin John Oakes. Nevertheless, Goulden reveals, by 1986 Rosenthal was earning more than $600,000 a year from salary and executive bonuses.

Rosenthal's interests increasingly turned toward opinion rather than news. When the Sulzberger family refused to waive the mandatory retirement age of 65 for him, he commenced his column, "On My Mind." in the column he indulged his passion for Israel as freely as his obsessive and uncontroversial condemnations of past Nazi and Communist excesses. In his columns he castigates the PLO, making little effort to distinguish between Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian extremists responsible for terrorist acts against civilians.

Although Rosenthal may have been stirred by the inscription on the bust in the Times' lobby: "To give the news impartially without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect or interest involved' he scarcely permitted this to guide the paper's extensive coverage of the Middle East conflict.

Goulden details the jockeying for power on the Times following the premature takeover of the paper by 37-year-old Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. on the death of Orvil Dryfoos, who had succeeded his father-in-law at the helm of the paper. The machinations of Rosenthal vis-a-vis Arthur Gelb, Sidney Gruson, John Oakes, and Thomas Bernstein are detailed.

Goulden cites examples of the inflexible anticommunism of Rosenthal, even to the point of vendettas with such reporters as Harrison Salisbury and film critic Clive Barnes for writing about "the innocent victims of McCarthy."

It was clear to the Sulzberger family that Rosenthal was not their kind of a Jew. This, and perhaps the fact that he had a non-Jewish wife and non-Jewish mistress, only intensified his drive to advance Israel's image. This was manifest in the paper's news reporting and news placement. While his love of Israel was very subtly injected, he evoked more raw emotion on this subject than on any other foreign issue.

As editor, Rosenthal on occasion did not conceal his personal bias for Israel. Correspondent Thomas L. Friedman, in an August 1982 dispatch, reported "indiscriminate" Israeli bombing of Beirut. The telex machine in his office soon brought a message from New York. The word "indiscriminate" was editorializing, and editors had deleted it, although praising Friedman for "good work under dangerous conditions."

Friedman replied that he had purposely used the word after traveling around Beirut and concluding that the bombing that day was fundamentally different from what had happened on the previous 63 days. "What can I say?" Friedman telexed. "I am filled with profound sadness by what I have learned in the past afternoon about my newspaper."

In a rage, Rosenthal ordered him to return to New York immediately. Friedman expected he would be fired. By the time Friedman arrived in New York for a lunch appointment, however, Rosenthal came in "looking unhappy, glowered at Friedman and then said: 'You are receiving a $5,000 raise.'" After Friedman described what had actually been taking place in Beirut, Rosenthal seemed relaxed and friendly. However, he warned: "If you ever pull a stunt like that again, you are fired!"

Aside from, or perhaps because of his biases, the book makes it dear that Rosenthal's genius enabled the Times to challenge successfully the rising might of television. His method was through "reportorial" opinion, which supplanted the "just the facts" of an earlier era. It is the careful documentation of Rosenthal's eccentric combination of journalistic brilliance and bias that makes Goulden's 486-page book, published in 1988 at $21.95 by Lyle Stuart, both irritating and informative.

Dr. Alfred M. Lilienthal served in the Middle East in World War II and has spent a lifetime since educating Americans on Middle East realities. He is the author of What Price Israel?,There Goes the Middle East, The Other Side of the Coin, and his monumental The Zionist Connection.