NYT Public Editor: Failure to Note Palestinian Terrorist’s Crimes Risks Newspaper’s Credibility

In this Jan. 25, 2012 file photo, jailed Senior Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti appears in a
AP/Bernat Armangue

The Times of Israel reports: The New York Times’s public editor Liz Spayd on Tuesday criticized the paper’s op-ed department for its failure to list the terror crimes that earned Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti five life sentences in prison, saying such skimping on opinion writers’ biographical information is a repeated fault that discredits the paper.

Barghouti wrote a New York Times piece Sunday in defense of the mass hunger strike by Palestinian security prisoners he initiated on Monday. The op-ed’s tag line described Barghouti as a “parliamentarian and leader” but did not mention the terror attacks for which he was convicted.

“I see no reason to skimp on this, while failing to do so risks the credibility of the author and the Op-Ed pages,” Spayd wrote in a piece titled “An Op-Ed Author Omits His Crimes, and The Times Does Too.” Spayd noted that she had spoken personally with Jim Dao, editor of the Op-Ed pages, about the omission of Barghouti’s past.

Read more here.

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