The NYT’s handsomely compensated diplomatic reporter Helene Cooper is “only” 13 days behind Just World News in reporting that Egypt has gotten some support from the US State Department in its continuing efforts to negotiate an Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
Strengths of my reporting over hers:
- 1. I had a reference and a link to the extremely revealing comment Rice made in a March 6 press conference in Brussels, when she said she “had talked to the Egyptian leaders and expressed confidence that their efforts could promote the US-backed peace talks.” I also linked to the AFP report that spelled out that Rice’s remarks were in response to a question “about reported talks between Cairo and Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.” Cooper made no mention of this at all, though it was the most public (even if still slightly guarded) expression of support any administration official has ever made for the Israel-Hamas negotiations, and was therefore key to her story. And it’s all there in the public record!
2. I had links and references to some excellent reporting by Al-Masry al-Yawm’s Fathiya Dakhakhni that spelled out Hamas’s negotiating position in some detail. Cooper seemingly couldn’t give a toss.
3. I explored in some detail Egypt’s reasons for undertaking this mediating role despite the considerable reservations that President Mubarak entertains towards Hamas. (With lots of hyperlinks.) No toss here from Cooper, either.
4. I scooped her by 13 days.
Strengths of her reporting over mine:
- 1. She wrote her piece after mine and therefore was able to incorporate into it the whole “story” about the trouble the State Department got into by publishing on a sort of “quasi-official” blog a question about whether the US government should seek to “engage” Hamas, and the furious response that elicited from a Congressman who’s on the House Appropriations Committee and expressed outrage that the question had even been asked. (The State Dept spokesman rapidly put up a comment to the effect that they were merely asking the question, not defining policy.)
2. She got direct quotes from two Israelis who have been in Washington and support the idea of engaging with Hamas. (I could have gotten those quotes but I’ve been busy with a bunch of other things, as attentive readers will be aware.)
3. She got paid for her work on this story. (H’mm, I’m not actually sure if this makes her work better or not. Probably it’s a wash.)
One intriguing thing that is underlined yet again by Cooper’s story is the extreme difficulty any US administration will always have even talking about thinking about engaging with Hamas– unless the Government of Israel has already done so first.
This is so like the whole story of the PLO back in the 1980s and early 1990s! Back then, it was the Norwegians, bless their dear misguided hearts, who did the preparatory intermediation. Nowadays its the Egyptians. I actually explored some of the strange and– from the American point of view– completely dysfunctional dimensions of that tail-wags-dog phenomenon in my article in The Nation last November.
Maybe Helene Cooper could helpfully go read that one, too?
Helena, I feel your frustrations, you are neither a “handsomely compensated diplomatic reporternor JWN site after breaking news it’s more than that to compare yourself with her.
You are an analyst in ME which make you more different with other news these reporters who seek breaking news for big heads of news.
I edited Danny Pearl’s book “At Home in the World.”
Three quick points to add:
(1) The last quote was from a spoofer, not from H. Cooper. I think the act of using a deliberately misleading name as a commenter considerably complicates discussion. Please don’t do it again. (Also, it was a notably irrelevant addition to the conversation.)
(2) I do actually have my own little supply of Daniel Levy quotes, from the time we were speaking together at the mid-Feb panel on Capitol Hill. Just in case it matters. I guess it does to the extent that one recognizes that noting that “an Israeli” has advocated some specific pro-peace move instantly makes its a lot more acceptable within American mainstream discourse.
(3) On further reflection, I think that the real news in the Cooper may be that is telling us that the administration is now quietly trying to claim ownership of the Egyptian mediation? In her lead she writes, “the Bush administration is using Egypt as an intermediary to open a channel between Israel and representatives of [Hamas].” Sadly, though, she gives no attribution at all to this observation– and there’s nothing in her piece that she attributes to “administration officials”, at any depth of background. Her only identified direct sources are: an anonymous “Arab” diplomat, presumably Egyptian; D. Levy and S. Ben Ami; the outraged Congressman; and un-named “Mideast analysts”– quite likely Levy and Ben Ami. She gives no evidence of having tried to get anhyone from the State Dept speak on the matter. If she had tried and failed to get any comment from them at all, I think that would have been newsworthy and should have been noted?
I understand your frustration. AND the internet works like a kind of collective consciousness, a soup of ideas. If you are going to put your work out there as “open source” (unpaid reporting on a blog) then your work will become part of the soup. Somebody else might build on it.
The positive side is that this reporting got into the NYT at all. Furthermore, your work helped create the context for Cooper’s report.
OK OK that might not make you feel better. You could stop blogging (I don’t want you to), or you could only blog things that you’ve already been paid for.
I still think that whatever you contribute online makes a difference and that in itself is a reward. Getting paid is a whole other issue.
I have similar experiences at a much lower level (I’m not a journalist) – my little squibs on Dove’s Eye View sometimes get picked up and expanded by mainstream reporters, especially from Lebanon. During the 2006 Israeli attack on Lebanon, I posted about Lebanese war jokes – I’d heard a few by phone from relatives in the village. N———- (name redacted) then wrote, a week or two later, an article in either the NYT or WaPo about war jokes, using several of the same ones I posted. Maybe it was just a coincidence… I decided to take it as a compliment in any case.