Irresponsible Journalism

Wow, take a bunch of drunk ignorant young kids and pass it off as journalism and as real Israeli/Jewish American opinion.
This is pathetic attempt at controversy. Don't get me wrong most of these aholes are deplorable. There is real criticism of Obama, but this is just someone taking advantages of drunks. I wish I could just dismiss and say, hey just ignore these idiots. But I can't, because whenever Jews say something racist and horrible like these people int he video did it spreads and all the Jews are condemned for the remarks of small but very dumb minority. Even 50 Cent seems to had to comment on this. (I wonder if he will link the other video, where Israeli University students actually have something worth hearing to say.)

Thanks to Samtron for both links.

Update: (from Jewlicious who of course covered this 4 days ago, the actual blog entry calls for a defense of Blumenthal (the guy responsible for the piece, several commenters explain the reason not to)
Defenders of a free press must rally around Blumenthal and Dana.”

No. No. No. Blumenthal is an outsider, but Dana lives in Israel, and I would expect more of him. Yet he has been anything but straightforward about this video. It is not about free press - this very misleading. video is intended to wrongly slander Israel and Israelis.

1. The video is titled “Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem.”
Most of the “interviewees” are not Israeli, despite Dana’s initial protestations to the contrary. Clearly, the intention is present the video as a portrayal of Jerusalem, which it is not. It was all filmed in a 2 block radius, that any Israeli knows is filled with mostly American teens on various programs visiting Israel.

2. I had a brief comment back-and-forth on Dana’s blog. After he did not like my comments rebutting the claim that those on the video were Israelis at all, dual citizens or otherwise (to which he responded, at first), he decided it was ok to simple delete all the comments. Not simply close them, as he claimed. He has posted a number of posts regarding this video, which received comments, and nearly all of these posts (the ones with comments) have somehow disappeared completely. This is not the practice of honest journalism, and supporters of a free press should be castigating Dana, not supporting the makers of this video.

3. Further, he has now changed his view. First it was that most of the “interviewees” were Israeli and representative of society (” They were two people in this video that did not have Israeli citizenship…I am sorry but it not a tiny part of society. It is shocking but it is not small.” - comment of his that was deleted but I still have in my email). At the same time he was obscuring the point (“reflective of a huge part of the American Jewish community.”) about a video that claims to be about Jerusalem. Now he says Doubtlessly anyone who has visited Jerusalem has encountered the droves of American Jewish kids that are sent to Israel to study,” in stark contrast to his initial stance.

Later on, Dana decided to go on the offensive, claiming I attacked him and spread lies (when I had said nothing about him that wasn’t to him, or on his blog), and started ascribing other past POVs to me, in order to claim I lied.

This is not about free press at all - the video itself has about as much “news value” as a Borat sketch. I did not, initially, ascribe any malice to the makers of the video, and thought they were acting in good faith (לדון כל אדם לכף זכות). However, the unwillingness to see one’s gross mistakes, along with the evasion and cover-ups seem to me like pretty clear evidence I was wrong, and that an attempt was made to simply baselessly slander Israel and Israelis. That is what is newsworthy here.