This led to a debate in the Times about whether this journalist with three decades of reporting experience had a conflict of interest. Could he cover critically a government who his son serves in the military?
In a Times column by Bill Keller, the executive editor, he argued Bronner should stay as the paper’s correspondent in Israel. Bronner, he said, informed the paper and that there was no reason to doubt Bronner’s objectivity. Keller suggested the problem was that people claiming there is a conflict of interest are bringing in their own prejudices on the issues.
Clark Hoyt, the Times’s public editor disagreed. He lauded Bronner but said that even the appearance of a possible conflict of interest is cause for reassignment, at least for the duration of his son’s service in the Israeli military.
Others have pointed out that this situation is pretty clearly addressed by the Times' ethics guidelines, as Alison Weir points out:
This is considered so critical that the Times devotes considerable attention to “conflict of interest” (also called “conflict with impartiality”) problems, situations in which personal interest might cause a journalist to intentionally or unconsciously slant a story.As Richard Chesnoff argues back, he himself had a son serve in the Israeli military and it did not impact his journalistic integrity, so he believes.
The Times notes that family affiliations may cause such a conflict; as an example, it explains that a daughter’s high position on Wall Street could be problematic for a business reporter.
Many are judging this issue on the basis of Bronner's credentials. Those who know him personally, base their views on what they know of him, but they cannot imagine what would happen in various scenarios. The fact is that if Israel invades Gaza or Lebanon again, and Bronner's covering it, his reporting will be called into question very easily. And there are no guarantees that concern for his son will color his reporting (be mindful that this could go for or against Israel since a father whose son is in war isn't always pro-war).
Secondly, assuming he speaks to his son, this will be an easy avenue of Israeli press relations. If the IDF wants to highlight something negative about the Palestinians, they can deploy his son with the knowledge word gets back; at the same time, they can shield him from their own nefarious practices.
The biggest problem with this is that Bronner's professionalism aside, his position, along with Chesnoff's, is fundamentally concerning. These correspondents who embed themselves in Israeli society, who live there and have children-citizens, will tend to see things through an Israeli lens -- not always -- but definitely more frequently than they will a Palestinian one. They may think facts are facts, but without living among the Palestinians as Amira Hass does, they reportage will always be constrained, no matter how much pro-Israel readers may complain (complaints received are no measure of objectivity -- pro-Israel readers expect complete bias in their direction; pro-Palestinian readers assume pro-Israel bias and often do not even bother complaining).
In the end, journalistic integrity demands he be assigned. This is not an argument made from a pro-Palestinian perspective. I think it likely his replacement would be even more pro-Israeli, since the newest correspondents tend to be so (with some exceptions).
