THE FREE PRESS
When We Started to Lie
Matti Friedman
September 10, 2024

…The most important thing I saw during my time as a correspondent in the American press, it seemed to me, was happening among my colleagues. The practice of journalism—that is, knowledgeable analysis of messy events on Planet Earth—was being replaced by a kind of aggressive activism that left little room for dissent. The new goal was not to describe reality, but to usher readers to the correct political conclusion, and if this sounds familiar now, it was both new and surprising to the younger version of myself who was lucky to get a job with the AP’s Jerusalem bureau in 2006. The story I found myself part of proposed, in effect, that the ills of Western civilization—racism, militarism, colonialism, nationalism—were embodied by Israel, which was covered more heavily than any other foreign country. READ MORE