Ben Bradlee (right) with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
This was a busy news week with many reports of tragedies, including horrific terror attacks both in Jerusalem and the Canadian capital of Ottawa. I’ll come back to these incidents shortly. A news story that gave me pause, though, was the report I heard on the car radio Wednesday morning that Ben Bradlee died at the age of 93. The former Executive Editor of the Washington Post was an American hero who championed the First Amendment’s call for freedom of the press. He spoke truth to power when he made his historic decision to publish the Pentagon papers that exposed the abuses of the Johnson Administration’s prosecution of the Vietnam War. He then entrusted two young reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, to pursue the report of a suspicious burglary at the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. Their reporting exposed the corruption of the Nixon White House and contributed to Nixon’s ultimate resignation.
In reading various obituaries of Bradlee this week, I was struck by a tribute to him by Bob Woodward who remembered the words that as a young reporter he most hated to hear from Mr. Bradlee: “You don’t have it yet, kid.”
As important as freedom of the press and accountability of leaders were to Ben Bradlee, of utmost importance to Bradlee was the truth. The story had to be right before it could go to press.
At this point, I could pivot to the Torah reading and draw a nice analogy between our Torah portion, Parashat Noach, and the legacy of Ben Bradlee. The Torah reading notes Va-tishahet haaretz lifnei Ha-Elohim, va-timale haaretz hamas. “The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with lawlessness” (Gen. 6:11; Hamas here is not related etymologically to the terrorist organization by the same name). Through a close reading, the Sages wonder why the verse must add the phrase “before God.” Isn’t that obvious? Rather, the Jerusalem Talmud understands the word translated as “lawlessness” (hamas) to mean that people cheated each other for such small sums that the courts could not prosecute them (JT BM 4:2). This caused people to lose faith in the power of government to provide them with a fair and livable world, and society began to slip into anarchy (from Etz Hayim, p. 41). When the truth was ignored, society crumbled. Noah, though he had his faults, was uncorrupted by the pervasive lies around him, and God saved him. In modern times, Ben Bradlee stood for the truth and reminded our nation that our government’s credibility must rest on the foundation of truth.
That could be a decent enough D’var Torah, and we could call it a day and wish each other Shabbat Shalom. However, that same Wednesday, we learned of a terrible terrorist attack in Jerusalem in which a Palestinian terrorist rammed his car into a crowded train stop killing a precious three-month-old baby girl, Chasya Zissel Braun, z”l . Her parents had struggled for years to conceive, and they had just returned from taking their daughter to the Kotel for the first time. In addition to the death of this baby, several others were injured, and police on the scene quickly shot and killed the driver.
The Associated Press reported this crime with the following headline: Israeli police shoot man in east Jerusalem. They added the following summary: “Israeli police say they shot a man whose car slammed into a crowded train stop in east Jerusalem, in what they suspect was an intentional attack.”
The Internet soon lit up with criticism of the Associated Press biased, out-of-context headline. The AP responded by “correcting” the headline, which they changed to “Car slams into east Jerusalem train station.” That darn automobile just had anti-Semitism flowing through its engine, spark plugs and wiper fluid! Finally, after even more widespread outrage on social media, they changed the headline to “Palestinian kills baby at Jerusalem station.” Benji Lovitt, a blogger on the Times of Israel, lampooned the AP with a number of hypothetical headlines such as: “Noah Abducts Entire Animal Kingdom” or “John Lennon Drives Fan to Crime” or “Abraham Lincoln Interrupts Play.” This is dark humor at its best.
The good news is that the AP responded to criticism and wrote a more accurate headline that reflected the actual tragedy that occurred. Nevertheless, the original headline highlighted an inherent bias in the press that tends to view Israel as the aggressor and the Palestinians as victims.
Unfortunately, the same day this attack occurred in Jerusalem, there was also a terrorist attack at the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa, Ontario, reminding us that the cancerous scourge of terror can and does reach our shores. The press had no problems reporting this story. The New York Times headline read: “Gunman Panics Ottawa, Killing Soldier in Spree at Capital.” There was no hiding behind passive language or the government’s just actions in defending its citizens and government leaders.
In response to the murder of the baby girl in Israel and the Associated Press’s initial coverage, another blogger on The Times of Israel, Sarah Tuttle-Singer, wrote a chilling but poetic reflection. She asks us to imagine the joy of the Braun family over their newborn daughter and her first trip to the Kotel. Then she is killed before their eyes.
“Can you imagine their horror? The screams and then the silence…
“A baby girl is dead.
“Her family is shattered.
“Meanwhile, international media reports that “Israeli police shot an E. Jerusalem man.” (AP may have changed the headline, but the url exists forever and ever.)
“I kind of hate the world right now.
“Let’s all light a candle. It’s really dark here.”
In Parashat Noach, pervasive lying and lawlessness brought darkness to the universe. Only Noah and his family lit a candle of truth, and God saved them. Similarly, in our own time, the darkness of falsehood is spreading. When the world tolerates terror against the Jews and ignores the truth that militant Islam stands for death and destruction of Western civilization, it will continue to metastasize around the world. We’ve seen terror in America on 9/11, and now, unfortunately it has come to Canada as well. The Western free press is the first line of defense against anti-democratic trends around the world, and the credibility of journalism rests on getting it right.
Maybe the Associated Press’s response to criticism is a sign of hope. A large number of critics mustered a bit of Ben Bradlee and said to the AP: “You don’t have it yet, kid.” When we hold a mirror to the press and remind it what it stands for, we’ll not only help them get it right, we may even save lives. May God grant us the strength to bring truth and light into the world.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein 
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