Tom Friedman’s Relativism

By Steven I. Weiss

Tom Friedman, perhaps the most famous columnist in America following the attacks of September 11th, returned last month from a whirlwind tour of the Middle East.  His return, and his subsequent recounting of his experiences within his column, were hotly anticipated by many American policy wonks.  However, in his columns and other statements made since his return, he has indicated that his version of the facts does not even aspire to journalistic objectivity.

In an interview for his new feature, “Tom’s Journal,” a part of PBS’ “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” columnist Tom Friedman explained that his choice of terms for describing Middle East violence comes not from an analysis of the facts, but in response to Arab journalists’ usage.

In his interview with Margaret Warner, broadcast on February 20th, Friedman said of staffers at Saudi daily Okaz:

“At Okaz, just by example, you know, they were saying to me why don’t you call Sharon a terrorist. You say we’re breeding terrorists. Why don’t you call Sharon a terrorist. I said let’s make a deal. Let’s have a contract right now. I Tom Friedman of The New York Times promise to ever more call Ariel Sharon a terrorist in my column if you, the Okaz newspaper, will call Palestinians who blow up Israeli kids in a pizza parlor terrorists do. Do I have any takers? No takers.”

Readers should assume from this that Friedman, when forced to express himself objectively, thinks Sharon is a terrorist (or, less likely, that neither side in the violence can be classified as “terrorist”).  He declares here that his journalism is not a reporting of facts as he sees them, but one adjusted to balance out the reporting of seeming Palestinian-sympathetic journalists in the Arab world.

So long as Friedman maintains this stance, readers of the New York Times can assume that his reporting contains no real insight into what actually is, but only into what some other newspaper — perhaps in some other language — is providing for its readers.  This leads to serious questions regarding the reliability of his reporting, which must now be questioned, especially when he attempts to use his column to achieve grand ends.

In his widely-discussed February 17th piece, “An Intriguing Signal From the Saudi Crown Prince,” Friedman reported that Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud had secretly developed a plan for achieving Mid-East peace.  After much thought, Friedman reported, the prince allowed Friedman to reveal the plan in his column.  The plan has, subsequently, been “welcomed” by President Bush, according to numerous front-page stories in the Times.

Readers are now left to ponder whether Friedman printed this piece only in response to the reporting of Arab journalists, or whether he left out vital facts or characterizations because those same journalists hadn’t.  The assumption that Friedman is reporting all of these facts using an objective journalistic standard is no longer the reader’s best option.

Another reality that Friedman’s statement implies is that he assumes Arab reporting to be biased on its face.  This may, in fact, be worse than the first implication.  Friedman is, ostensibly, simply ignoring the opinions of Arab journalists, again, not because he has done a thorough weighing of the facts; he does so because he assumes Arab reporting to be biased.  Even if Friedman’s assumption proves to be correct, his reporting is no less tainted, and no more reliable.

Of course, the possibility remains that Friedman doesn’t feel that Sharon truly is a terrorist, but that he’s willing to call Sharon one in order to “purchase” the influence on the mythic “Arab street” that Okaz would have in labeling Palestinians as terrorists.  If that is the case, Friedman is engaging in a sort of journalistic diplomacy in which his every comment may well be payment for a revised style guide elsewhere and neither party is assumed to be reporting objectively.  If Friedman’s philosophy becomes the norm for journalists, readers will have to deconstruct every article, assuming that the true ideology behind the reporting has come from one of a given number of newspapers that Friedman has invited to join his exchange.  Full disclosure should then come to include a listing of newspapers with which a reporter has a relatively-frequent dialogue.

Whatever Friedman really thinks about Sharon or Palestinian militants/ terrorists/ freedom-fighters/ radicals, he has indicated what he really thinks of the journalistic enterprise, and it’s not pleasing.