Journalist or Diplomat?   

New York Times column makes headlines, debate

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says he was reporting "intriguing" news, not making it. However, a February column of his not only raised hopes for Middle East peace and touched off debate about the role of journalists in diplomacy, but displayed how vastly news judgment can vary--even among America's major papers.

Friedman's February 17 column described a dinner meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in which the prince outlined a land-for-peace deal to stop the escalating violence in Israel and the West Bank. It was an "intriguing" idea--as the headline on the column said--especially since the prince suggested full diplomatic and economic relations between Arab nations and Israel.

"I pass all of this on as straightforwardly as I can, without hype or unrealistic hopes," Friedman wrote.

Hype and unrealistic hopes quickly mushroomed anyway.

President Bush praised Abdullah by phone. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the Saudi initiative was "an interesting idea." One Palestinian official called it "the most significant and strategic idea that came from the Arab world since the convening of the Middle East conference in 1991." Envoys from Europe, the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia rushed to discuss the concept before the Arab summit in late March.

Meanwhile, dozens of Israelis and Palestinians died in the streets of Jerusalem and the West Bank in some of the worst fighting in the present conflict.

And Friedman came under fire for acting as much like a diplomat as a columnist. A Boston Globe editorial said it wasn't a textbook way to conduct international relations. The National Public Radio show "On the Media" quoted Ted Koppel as saying he finds "journalism-fueled diplomacy to be entirely inappropriate and antithetical to the mission of journalism." A column in the Jerusalem Post scoffed that Friedman, "a new peace mediator," presented "a kind of Arab version of Cinderella."

By early March, Friedman was ducking criticism, attributing all the fuss to two factors: "a void of diplomacy" in the Middle East and people being "really hungry for just some way out" of the escalating violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

"I'm trying to stay out of the way of this story," Friedman told AJR. "It's certainly not about the column. It's about a really dark moment. There is no columnist anywhere who will drive this part of the world."

But the columnist's interview with the prince did appear to drive a curious wedge in news judgment between the New York Times on the one hand and the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times on the other.

For several days after Friedman's February 17 column, the American press was silent on the issue. "It was a slow fuse," as Friedman puts it. Then, on February 22, a brief New York Times story ran on page A10 with the headline, "U.S. is talking up plan from Saudis on Mideast." The story cited Friedman's column as the source of the discussions. The Times followed up with another story in the back of the A section on February 26 with the headline, "Saudi's idea stirs hope." Then the paper reeled off three prominent A1 stories on the issue on February 27, 28 and Sunday, March 3. The Sunday piece carried this headline: "Quickly, a Saudi peace idea gains momentum."

But the story couldn't crack the front page of the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times. Both papers ran stories toward the back of their A sections between February 27 and March 2. The stories took thinly veiled swipes at the New York competition.

In a March 1 piece on washingtonpost.com, writer Jefferson Morley labeled the Saudi idea "nebulous" and said "it is a measure of despair generated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" that the Friedman interview with Abdullah "could generate such widespread interest and debate."

Two days earlier, correspondents Tracy Wilkinson and Michael Slackman told L.A. Times readers the Saudi peace formula "emerged as nothing more than a trial balloon in the New York Times."

"I wrote about it when it became something everybody started talking about," Wilkinson, who is based in Jerusalem, told AJR. "I don't know of any documents. I don't know of anything formal [from the Saudis]. It's really hard to see peace now."

Other Middle East reporters were more cynical.

"We've taken to calling it the New York Times Peace Plan, not the Saudi Plan," cracked a competing Jerusalem-based correspondent. "What's going on on the ground is so far gone, so far beyond the point where that plan could at all work, it's sort of ridiculous. This is a dead letter. This is a stillborn."

The media column in the weekly New York Observer quoted one Times staffer cheering Friedman: "It looks good for the paper if he played a role in bringing peace." Another staffer told the weekly, "There is a certain amount of hubris to these people that they think they can negotiate Mideast peace. The self-importance is hard to take."

So why did the New York Times give the Saudi story so much more play?

Roger Cohen, the Times' acting foreign editor, declined comment through an assistant.

"We think our coverage has been proportionate and thorough, as our coverage of major foreign diplomatic issues always is," New York Times Co. spokesman Toby Usnik said in a written statement to AJR. "Regarding your questions on comments from reporters with other news organizations, the questions are tendentious and we really have nothing to say about them. Also, please note that Mr. Friedman is not a staff member of the news department, and we cover him at arm's length. If the Saudis had chosen to speak to someone from another news organization, we would be covering the comment the same way."