Bloomberg’s Jonathan Ferziger Awarded Robert St. John Chair in Objective Middle East Reporting Prize

  
 

Bloomberg’s Jonathan Ferziger says the key elements to reporting on Israel and its neighbors are getting to know all sides of the conflict and striving for fairness. Ferziger, who began working in the region in 1990, delivered a lecture last Sunday under the auspices of the Robert St. John Chair in Objective Middle East Reporting. 

The speech, sponsored by the Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, was entitled, “Truth Under Siege: Reporting in the Age of Alternative Facts.” 

Weaving personal anecdotes from a career with Bloomberg and United Press International that brought him to Tel Aviv by way of Saudi Arabia, Ferziger laid out some of his golden rules.  

“The best journalism is about Being There. Seeing both sides of the equation. Getting out of your comfort zone. Suspending assumptions. Touching, tasting, being a witness to the unusual and the inaccessible. And then telling people about it. Telling people in an honest and fair way about stuff they ought to know. And yes, reporting objectively." 

“Many see objective reporting as a pretense and believe it produces boring, bloodless journalism. And we can debate whether any journalism truly achieves the elusive ideal of objectivity. But the goal of objectivity must be a guide.  

“So when we talk about objectivity in Middle East reporting -- it starts with getting to know the Middle East. For me it means leaving my apartment in Tel Aviv, passing into the West Bank through the Qalandia checkpoint in East Jerusalem and meeting Palestinians in Ramallah.  

“And while I'm in the neighborhood taking a bend in the road to Beit El and talking to Jewish settlers. It means going to Hamas refugee camps in the Gaza Strip...and finding my way to Abu Dhabi to interview the exiled Mohammed Dahlan, one of the top figures who might replace Abu Mazen as Palestinian leader.

“Seeing different sides to this conflict is critical. Reporting with passion but fairness… and aiming for objectivity. Those are values that were embodied by Robert St. John in a career that spanned eight decades. Those are the values that his family continues to support by endowing this Ben Gurion university chair in Objective Middle East Reporting. 

Being there comes with its own hazards, some moral and some physical, he mused. 

“How do you get inside a society or population that has values you oppose and may even detest? If you interview one of their leaders, can you shake his hand? And conversely, how do you avoid drawing a moral equivalency with Democratic societies whose values you share? 

“You do your best. In the words of Carl Bernstein, The Washington Post reporter who broke the Watergate scandal: You strive for ``the best obtainable version of the truth.’’ You present the competing narratives, the subjective experiences, but you also fact-check the hell out of the information you gather. Facts matter."

Ferziger has covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for 27 years and was not optimistic that President Trump could arrange the “ultimate deal.”  

“But then again, we’ve never seen a president like Donald Trump,” he wryly pointed out.  

Ferziger addressed the unique challenge Trump and his White House present to journalists. 

“No president since Richard Nixon has been so openly hostile to the press. For reporters, it's been a constant battle with a man who loves to accuse the media of delivering ``fake news.'' He riles up the crowds at political rallies by pointing to the press corps… and saying folks, these guys are ``your enemies.''  

“When the president boasted in January that the crowds at his inauguration were bigger than those at Barack Obama’s, his adviser Kellyanne Conway declared war on the truth -- with the phrase that in many ways defines this presidency. Even though photos made it obvious that Trump was way off, Conway said the White House took the prerogative to offer, what she called, `alternative facts.' ” In short, you in the media no longer have a monopoly on the truth. We’ve got our own truth.''  

Ferziger also addressed the changing nature of journalism and new media.  

“For the press, `Get used to it.’ is a rude wake-up call for an industry in contraction,” Ferziger said. “The stakes are high, and we’ve seen the press resurgent and determined. The sheer audacity of the Trump administration is rousing news organizations to push back and fulfill their crucial role in a democracy. When the president fires FBI director James Comey, just as Comey is expanding an investigation into allegations of improper ties with Russia, that’s an opportunity for journalists to investigate whether this is an abuse of power.”  

Ferziger drew two parallels to the new U.S. president.  

“When Trump tries to intimidate Comey by hinting that everything said in the Oval Office is recorded, that’s an invitation for journalists to look into how similar activity ultimately led to Nixon’s resignation.  

“The poisonous dynamics in Washington have a parallel right here, in the combative relationship that Prime Minister Netanyahu has with the Israeli press. Bibi wakes up every morning to allegations of bribery, stories about mysterious gifts of Cuban cigars and pink champagne, investigations into how his wife treats the household staff and why he's started dying his hair. In turn, he has virtually stopped giving interviews to the local media.  

“Netanyahu has also been putting out a steady stream of tweets and Youtube videos. These social media platforms have become useful tools for politicians because nobody gets in the way to challenge them on the facts,” he argued.  

Moreover, “it’s not just presidents and prime ministers who have access to these powerful delivery platforms, and this access is transforming the nature of journalism. Virtually everybody has a smartphone today equipped with a camera. When a doctor waiting for take-off on a United Airlines flight in the U.S. got beaten up by security guards and dragged off the plane, the episode was captured by other passengers and circulated to millions across the world on Facebook. 

“In the West Bank, Israeli soldiers have learned that many of their interactions with Palestinians are recorded now. That’s what happened with Elor Azaria, when he shot a Palestinian attacker who had already been rendered harmless by other soldiers,” he said.  

Ferziger concluded on a somber note, ““One of my earliest mentors at UPI was Marie Colvin, a true war reporter. Working for the Times of London, Marie went from one conflict to another, from Israel, to Libya, to Sri Lanka. She was known for writing about the terrible effects of military conflict on ordinary people. In 2012 she was killed in Syria covering the siege of Homs. Last year, 77 journalists around the world were killed and 259 were put in prison. 1,236 journalists have been killed over the past 25 years."  

Ferziger said Bloomberg will match the Robert St. John prize by making a $10,000 donation to the Committee to Protect Reporters. 

“Freedom of the press cannot be taken for granted,” he said, “We as reporters can push back by fulfilling our role, by not retreating, by recommitting ourselves to our historic job of reporting objectively and being a check on the abuse of government power. As unpopular as it may be, journalists must distinguish between facts and falsehoods, between reality and propaganda, and work hard to tell people the truth.” 

Jonathan Ferziger reports for Bloomberg News on Israeli and Palestinian affairs. Based in Tel Aviv, he has written frequently from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, shuttled to Washington for diplomatic talks and covered stories in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and the Persian Gulf. Ferziger began with Bloomberg in 1997 as a features editor in Hong Kong during the transition from British to Chinese rule. Earlier he worked for United Press International, covering the 1991 Gulf War from Saudi Arabia and moving to Israel as Jerusalem bureau chief. He started as an intern in UPI’s Paris bureau and reported on New York politics at the state capitol in Albany. 

Ferziger earned a BA in English from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a master's degree at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He spent the 1995-96 academic year as a Nieman fellow at Harvard University.