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Jewish Newspaper Editor Cancels His New York Times Subscription, Calling Israel Coverage ‘Dangerous’
A taxi passes by in front of The New York Times head office, Feb. 7, 2013. Photo: Reuters / Carlo Allegri / File.
A longtime New York newspaper editor has publicly canceled his New York Times subscription after 60 years, citing “consistent misrepresentations” about Israel that are “dangerous” and “debilitating toward the quest for truth.”
The veteran journalist, Ed Weintrob, was previously the editor of the Brooklyn Paper and is now the editor and publisher of The Jewish Star newspaper on Long Island. Weintrob is hardly a knee-jerk critic of the New York Times — in fact, when much of the Jewish community was up in arms against the Times for its investigative criticism of Jewish schools, Weintrob fronted a defense of the Times coverage by Jonathan Tobin, headlining it, “Tobin: Even lying Times got this right.”
In a May 3 social media post, Weintrob posted a screenshot of the cancellation form on the New York Times website, with the box ticked that listed as a reason, “I have concerns about the New York Times‘ coverage.”
In the explanation field on the form, Weintrob wrote, “A lifelong subscriber (and a journalist for nearly 50 years) I’ve approached the cancel button many times but never hit the trigger. The NYT, while not perfect, could usually be relied on to seemingly attempt honest coverage of key issues.”
The editor went on to tell the Times: “Your consistent misrepresentations toward Israel are at best cartoonish, at worst dangerous, and in all events debilitating to the quest for truth.”
To his social media audience, Weintrob explained, “Pushing that ‘cancel’ button was hard, but doing it was long overdue … It’s a cold-turkey break to a 60 year addiction (yes, I’ve been reading the NY Times print edition that long.”
Weintrob has plenty of company in deciding he no longer wants the print New York Times in his home. On May 8, the New York Times Company announced that print subscription revenues had declined, notwithstanding price increases, and that the number of print subscribers had dropped to 640,000 in the first quarter of 2024 from 710,000 in the first quarter of 2023, a nearly ten percent decline in a single year.
The paper has seen some digital growth, but news-only digital subscriptions have also dropped off, leaving it unclear whether the company’s customers are paying for New York Times news and opinion or for the wordgames, cooking recipe library, and “Athletic” sports publication.
Remaining Times readers looking for evidence of Weintrob’s claims of a departure from the truth will have no problem finding it in the Times. For example, a Times article about a clash between anti-Israel (the Times insists on describing them as “pro-Palestinian,” as if allowing Hamas to remain in power in Gaza would be good for Palestinians) and pro-Israel demonstrators in Los Angeles concludes with this passage, relying on “Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University”:
The views of many of the young people demonstrating this week were shaped, he said, by knowing only Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing prime minister of Israel.
“All these students have seen is Netanyahu and a government there that to them seems autocratic, out of touch and not protecting democratic ideals,” Mr. Guerra said.
That’s a falsehood. In fact, Ehud Olmert was prime minister from 2006 to 2009, Naftali Bennett from 2021 to 2022, and Yair Lapid for six months in 2022. And the young people are being supported by professors, professional activists, grantmakers, and older graduate students who also have lived through other Israeli leaders.
As for “not protecting democratic ideals,” Israel has had five national elections since 2019. In contrast, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, was elected in 2005 to a four-year term as president of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas is in the 19th year of a four-year presidential term, and the anti-Israel protesters think Netanyahu is the autocrat?
Likewise, a Times magazine piece about Issa Amro, who the Times describes as a nonviolent Palestinian activist, reports, “In 2010, the year Amro received a Human Rights Defender of the Year award from the United Nations, a civilian flotilla carrying humanitarian aid approached a beach on the Gaza Strip and was met by Israeli commandos who boarded its flagship and killed nine of its crew. In this conflict, nonviolence would be no shield from violence.” The phrase “civilian flotilla carrying humanitarian aid” is just an outrageously misleading description of a convoy of terrorist-sympathizers carrying camouflage netting and aspiring for martyrdom.
I’d probably join Weintrob and cancel too, if I didn’t need to read the darn thing for this press criticism column.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
The post Jewish Newspaper Editor Cancels His New York Times Subscription, Calling Israel Coverage ‘Dangerous’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Two Russian Regions Block Telegram App Over Security Fears
The Telegram logo is seen on a screen of a smartphone in this picture illustration taken April 13, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin.
Authorities in two Russian regions have blocked the Telegram messenger because of concerns that the app could be used by enemies, a regional digital development minister was quoted as saying by the TASS state news agency on Saturday.
Dagestan and Chechnya are mainly Muslim regions in southern Russia where intelligence services have registered an increase in militant Islamist activity.
“It (Telegram) is often used by enemies, an example of which is the riots at the Makhachkala airport,” said Yuri Gamzatov, Dagestan’s digital development minister, adding that the decision to block the messenger had been made at the federal level.
Gamzatov was referring to an anti-Israel riot in Dagestan in October 2023, when hundreds of protesters stormed an airport to try to attack passengers arriving on a plane from the Jewish state. No passengers were injured, and authorities have prosecuted several people over the incident.
News of the plane’s arrival had spread on local Telegram channels, where users posted calls for antisemitic violence. Telegram condemned the attack and said it would block the channels.
Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the blocks in Russia.
Based in Dubai and founded by Russian-born Pavel Durov, the messenger has nearly 1 billion users and is used widely in Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.
Moscow tried but failed to block Telegram in 2018 and has in the past demanded the platform hand over user data. Durov is under formal investigation in France as part of a probe into organized crime on the app.
Gamzatov, the minister in Dagestan, said Telegram could be unblocked in the future, but encouraged users to switch to other messengers in the meantime.
The post Two Russian Regions Block Telegram App Over Security Fears first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump’s Scottish Golf Resort Vandalized with Pro-Palestine Graffiti
US President Donald Trump speaks at the White House, in Washington, DC, Feb. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland has been daubed with pro-Palestinian graffiti, with a protest group claiming responsibility.
Local media on Saturday showed images of red paint scrawled across walls at the course with the slogans “Free Gaza” and “Free Palestine” as well as insults against Trump.
“Gaza is not for sale” was also painted on one of the greens and holes dug up on the course.
Palestine Action said it caused the damage, posting on social media platform X: “Whilst Trump attempts to treat Gaza as his property, he should know his own property is within reach.”
Last month, Trump enraged the Arab world by declaring unexpectedly that the United States would take over Gaza, resettle its over 2-million Palestinian population and develop it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Police Scotland said it was investigating.
“Around 4.40am on Saturday, 8 March, 2025, we received a report of damage to the golf course and a premises on Maidens Road, Turnberry,” a Police Scotland spokesperson said, adding that enquiries were ongoing.
Separately on Saturday, a man waving a Palestinian flag climbed the Big Ben tower at London’s Palace of Westminster.
The post Trump’s Scottish Golf Resort Vandalized with Pro-Palestine Graffiti first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Columbia University Promises to Address Trump Administration’s Concerns After $400 Million in Funding Pulled
A student protester parades a Palestinian flag outside the entrance to Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University, in New York, US, April 30, 2024. Photo: Mary Altaffer/Pool via REUTERS
Columbia University’s interim president said the school is working to address the “legitimate concerns” of US President Donald Trump’s administration after $400 million of federal government grants and contracts to the university were canceled over allegations of antisemitism on campus.
In an announcement on Friday, the government cited what it described as antisemitic harassment on and near the school’s New York City campus as the reason for pulling the funding. The university has repeatedly been at the forefront of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel student protest movement since the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent war in Gaza.
“I want to assure the entire Columbia community that we are committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns,” Katrina Armstrong, the university’s interim president, said in a late-night message to alumni on Friday. “To that end, Columbia can, and will, continue to take serious action toward combating antisemitism on our campus.”
The Trump administration said the canceled funding is only a portion of the $5 billion in government grants that has been committed to the school, but the school is bracing for a financial hit.
“There is no question that the cancellation of these funds will immediately impact research and other critical functions of the University, impacting students, faculty, staff, research, and patient care,” Armstrong said.
Federal funding accounted for about $1.3 billion of the university’s $6.6 billion in operating revenue in the 2024 fiscal year, according to a Columbia financial report.
Some Jewish students and staff have been among the pro-Palestinian protesters, and they say their criticism of Israel is being wrongly conflated with antisemitism. Minouche Shafik resigned last year as Columbia’s president after the university’s handling of the protests drew criticism from pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian sides alike.
The administration has declined to say what contracts and grants it has canceled, but the Education Department argues the demonstrations have been unlawful and deprive Jewish students of learning opportunities.
Civil rights groups say the immediate cuts are unconstitutional punishment for protected speech and likely to face legal challenges.
The post Columbia University Promises to Address Trump Administration’s Concerns After $400 Million in Funding Pulled first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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