Ombudsman Rips Atlanta Paper For Lousy Coverage of Carter Book Controversy

NewsBusters has reported for months how the mainstream media did an absolutely lousy job covering the controversy surrounding former President Jimmy Carter’s book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [see editor's note at bottom of post]. As odd as it may seem, the ombudsman for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution agreed with us.

Angela Tuck, the AJC’s public editor, wrote the following on February 24 (emphasis mine throughout):

The controversy surrounding former President Jimmy Carter's book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the story that won't go away. And frankly, this newspaper was slow to cover the book and the firestorm it created.

That was only the beginning of this fabulous account of liberal media bias that would make Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly proud:

Some readers I've talked to believe this was a deliberate attempt by the newspaper to shield Carter, who has often been a polarizing figure in his home state and beyond.

[…]

Early on, editors at the newspaper should have run a review of Carter's book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," and had a writer probe the former president's assertions.

The article continued:

Depending on your perspective, Carter's book is either a courageous work by a Nobel Peace Prize winner who has championed peace in the Middle East for decades, or a divisive publication filled with lies.

That's why this newspaper should have looked at the book and the controversy surrounding it early on.

So should the rest of the mainstream media, Angela.

Editor's Note (Ken Shepherd | 10:40 EST): For a fuller list of NewsBusters posts on the media's coverage of Carter, you can search by node in the search field. Typing in "Jimmy Carter apartheid" will yield many of the articles NewsBusters contributors have written, such as Tim Graham's February 7 post on Helen Thomas's praise for Carter's book or Mark Finkelstein's November 27 post on Good Morning America's favorable treatment of the former president's latest book.