| By Dana Goldstein - Apr 23rd, 2007 at 11:49 am EDT |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
Even-tempered thinking on Israel/Palestine is in short supply. So that's why the story of what's happening to New Voices--a progressive Jewish magazine distributed on college campuses--is particularly sad. After publishing articles that criticized select elements of Israeli government policy and writing about alternative student tours of Israel that travel to the occupied territories, New Voices lost tens of thousands of dollars of funding and had to layoff a staff member. Now New Voices' funders are forcing them to publish rabid advertisements decrying the supposed "anti-Semitic climate" ravaging American college campuses.
That's just the kind of over-heated rhetoric that made Jewish students like me tune out. As New Voices editor Ilana Sichel tells The Nation, "To suddenly be told you have to toe this party line--it's contrary to what we stand for and it's contrary to what the Jewish intellectual tradition stands for."
!
Comments are closed for this post.
Why would a conservative student publication be justified in receiving funds from a progressive organization? If this were, say, a socialist free press organization dedicated to advancing the idea that any rube with a semi-functioning mimeograph should be entitled to cash, maybe there'd be a justification. But since this is a progressive organization, dedicated to the progressive cause and standing in opposition to the conservative movement, why would they ever give money to a conservative paper?
It's called "Campus Progress," not "Campus Whatever Political Agenda Comes In The Door Looking for a Free Lunch."
And where did funding from CP come into play? Nobody's talking about CP funding New Voices, so why are you?
If you're trying to make a point about, well, something (do you think it's hypocritical to not fund publications that oppose your point of view? that's how you're coming off) I think you missed.
It would be as if a liberal publication receiving funding from CP were to suddenly write a series of pieces that seem to support a conservative interpretation of a particular issue, and CP simply yanked its funding. Which would be kind of a dick move, especially if the publication had become reliant on CP's assistance. Now, of course CP is entitled to spend their cash where they please, but to pull funding midway through a grant period simply because an organization they had expressed faith in previously now had a disagreement with them on one issue, well, that would be both petty and counterproductive, since then no organizations with any independence would be willing to seek collaboration with CP, for fear of being treated like an in-house rag and forced to report what they're told to, when they're told to.
Management is not supposed to involve itself in editorial or news content in most publications, because such an arrangement is anathema to honest journalism. Don't renew a grant if you don't like the publication's policies, that's fine. But suddenly yanking a grant because there's a difference of opinion with something written by those believed capable enough at their jobs to have been entrusted with the grant in the first place? That's just a nicer form of extortion.
That said, who says the guys writing the checks in this case really want honest journalism? ;)
I'll bet that they'd *say* they do, because it sounds good to say, and nobody wants to hear themselves saying outright that "What I want is pre-scripted hackery". They might even believe it when they say it.
But whatever they say, their actions tell a different story. They have an agenda (And I intend that word in a neutral fashion, not to be scary), and they want to push it.
So that puts the magazine in an untenable situation. And putting them in that situation is pretty damn odious.
That said, putting out a magazine isn't charity work. It's perfectly reasonable for a wealthy patron to put whatever conditions they want on their grants, within the bounds of the contract, and if the publication doesn't like that they're free not to take the grant.
You mean they... expected a service in return for payment?
It is sad what's happening here, but I'm not seeing the travesty of it all.
If we progressive Jews want to put a greater diversity of Jewish thought out there beyond the establishment orthodoxy, we need to establish competing sources of funding, and encourage a greater diversity of Jewish organizations in the public debate in general.
IMHO, the real problem is the narrow range of voices representing us -- merely shifting that narrow range to be more palatable to us is only a stop-gap measure.
I happen to know the staff member who was laid off personally--and therefore am familliar with what happened with New Voices. It's a magazine that functions off of submissions from college students. Like CP, its objective is to give an outlet for college students to write articles on any issue, not just Israel, and doesn't presuppose a progressive ideology. Their only politics, as my friend once told me, is to give college students a place to express what they believe or wish to report. That most of the articles have a progressive angle is not entirely an accident, but has less to do with the ideology of the magazine and more to do with the pervasive ideology of those who choose to submit to it.
In my opinion, this shouldn't be looked at as a case of a big conservative organization quashing a little progressive magazine--it's about a big conservative organization quashing a little *student* magazine.