Editorial: When good media goes bad: Wikileaks, Conversion bills, and bad government

The first was the release by the website WikiLeaks of 91,000 documents related to the war in Afghanistan. The documents mostly comprise military and intelligence action reports that paint a much more detailed and vivid picture of the conflict that was previously available. Most intriguing and disturbing is the story the documents tell about Pakistan's continuing assistance to the Taliban, even as the government of Pakistan purports to be working in concert with the United States against terrorism. Pakistan denies it is double-dealing, and this week after the documents were released, US officials said Pakistan's support for the US mission has strengthened in recent months, perhaps as Pakistani officials have come to the realization that the Taliban poses a threat to their country too.

One aspect that we found disturbing was that WikiLeaks only withheld 15,000 documents that could have endangered lives and operations "as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source." In other words, by their own admission, they wouldn't have necessarily done so of their own volition to avoid causing harm to American troops and the war effort in general. That suggests a philosophy in which the journalism may have dangerously morphed from a valuable and effective means to an important end, into an end unto itself. Journalism is many things but it is not that.

The reporters at the Los Angeles Times did exactly what they were supposed to last week when they revealed that the small town of Bell, CA, on the outskirts of Los Angeles, was paying its town supervisor nearly $800,000 a year, and its police chief nearly half a million dollars. That's more than the President of the United States and the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, respectively, earn. When officials in a small town with a median income of under $25,000 are pulling in that kind of money for a dozen years, and cutting budgets and laying people off, something is very wrong. Most of the responsible parties have resigned; now lets see if any end up in jail.

The third story, the one that was generally not covered as well, is both closer to home and not of overly great concern to most American Jews at all (and that's the problem). We refer to the story of the Israeli Knesset's proposed bill on conversions to Judaism.

Most of the Jewish media (present company excepted) jumped on an erroneous band-wagon, putting forth twin incorrect notions that a) changes in the conversion process in Israel would somehow change how non-Orthodox converts from the United States are treated; and b) that Israel's Law of Return would tighten up its specifications and exclude people whom it would currently consider Jewish. Notwithstanding a great deal of hot air, indignation and threats that American Jews' support for Israel was on the line, neither of those details was true.

Don't believe us? Ask Mark Golub, a journalist, the president of Shalom TV, and, oh yes, a Reform rabbi, who wrote, "The bill never mentions the Law of Return and would have no impact on the way it would apply to any Diaspora Jew. If the bill were to become law, it would do nothing to change the current process by which Conservative and Reform conversions in America are accepted as valid for Jews seeking Israeli citizenship."

It's unfortunate that leaders of the non-Orthodox streams of Judaism resorted to such threats. They did so to generate American Jewish pressure against essentially an internal Israeli matter that would strengthen the status quo Orthodox hold on Jewish religious matters in Israel.

Worse is that the news media, particularly the Jewish news media, largely let them get away with it.