The same day (folio date July 8 sold July 7, 2018 as Early Sunday Edition) that Lisa Fuller, who signed her letter with a residence in North Potomac, had her letter picked for printing
by the Washington Post's letter selectors Pg. A7 the same day had a full page ad for David Trone's non-union Total Wine and More store chain.
That chain is strangely headquartered near Walter Johnson HS in the unincorporated USPS zip code area of Bethesda (Montgomery County) while not opening any stores in Montgomery County. Trone would be required to buy his inventory from the local government revenue-diversifying, and union pay scale-operated, Department of Liquor Control as well as request continual expansions of wine and beer offered at wholesale prices. Retail prices could not drop below county store prices to avoid predatory corporate alcohol sale capitalism.
Rather than risk advertising sale losses by not endorsing Trone, or reporting on the primary in a manner Trone finds 'biased' or 'unfair,' much as Democratic party Montgomery County executive nominee Marc Elrich feels that the ACT (Action Committee for Transit) voter scorecard and "greater greater Washington" blog have covered the county executive primary, it was in the Washington Post's fiscal interest to decide much of MDCD6 was outside the Post's local 'community' by leaving coverage to other papers in Frederick, Hagerstown and Cumberland and online only news organizations.
The past history of subscriber and advertiser boycotts of the Washington Post, based on disagreement with reporting because of potential future influence on subsequent events, cannot be lost even in the ownership change from the Eugene and Agnes Meyer and Phillip and Katherine Graham families to Jeff Bezos' family.
David Trone, a Jew by religious conversion choice after marrying a Jewish woman and raising his children as Jews, has created a board to build support for his and others' campaigns, including District 1 council nominee (and primary winner) Andrew Friedson, on the same issue that the Post's reporting has been the target of BDS tactics to change in 2002 and 2008.
One rich large business (Amazon) owner Jeff Bezos is rewarding, with little news coverage to be criticized and threatened if not economically boycotted by, another large business (Total Wine and More) owner David Trone to avoid more reader, subscriber and advertiser BDS tactics as the Post was subjected to in 2002 and 2008.
From: "EyeOnThePost, Inc." <info>
Subject: Announcement of Post Advertisers Campaign - Article in Washington Jewish Week
Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 03:35:50 -0500
Dear Friends:
Eye On The Post is pleased to announce the inauguration of a campaign to contact and educate Washington Post advertisers about the unbalanced, unfair and often misleading reporting of the Washington Post on matters pertaining to Israel. We've already been in touch with several hundred Washington Post advertisers, and we will be continuing this dialogue into the indefinite future.
We placed two display ads in the Washington Jewish Week during the last week of December, 2007. One of the ads pointed to two recent biased reports in the Washington Post within a five day period of time, one accusing Israel of racism toward its Arab citizens ( For Israel's Arab Citizens, Isolation and Exclusion, 12-20-07, A01) and the other of reducing Palestinians in Gaza to beggar status. ( Sealed Off By Israel, Gaza Reduced To Beggary, Saturday, December 15, 2007; Page A01). Our analyses of these two articles can be viewed on our web site at http://www.eyeonthepost.org.
The other display ad announced the inauguration of our campaign to educate advertisers.
The following week the Washington Jewish Week published an excellent news article about our campaign on page 3, which you can read below.
The Post's reputation worldwide as a quality and trustworthy news source should be questioned. Good writing alone doesn't equate to quality journalism. The Post's writers and editors routinely misrepresent and distort news on Israel in order to advance their personal opinion and agenda. The efforts noted above are directed primarily to the Post's immediate subscriber area in metropolitan Washington, DC, but as we've indicated before, we send these "Alerts" to tens of thousands of interested readers throughout the world. The Washington Post is a leader among the world's media, and although it is not alone in pursuing a slanted agenda in reporting on Israel, other papers follow its lead. Please help us to spread this message by forwarding it to all of your acquaintances who are concerned about the damage being done to Israel's reputation. And if you know someone who is responsible for the placement of advertising in the Washington Post, please educate him/her.
*************************
WASHINGTON JEWISH WEEK
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
All The News That's Unfit?
Local Watchdog Slams Post's Coverage Of Israel
Wednesday, January 02, 2008, Page 03
by Richard Greenberg
Associate Editor
A local media watchdog group has launched a campaign to "educate" companies that advertise in The Washington Post about what it contends is the newspaper's "unfair and unbalanced" coverage of Israel.
During the past few weeks, the organization Eye On The Post has contacted "several hundred" Post advertisers and informed them that the newspaper's coverage of Middle Eastern events is "regularly biased" in that it misrepresents Israel as a "belligerent, mean-spirited and racist" country whose often valid reasons for taking action against its foes are rarely mentioned, according to Robert Samet, who chairs the group.
"We want readers to know what they get when they buy the Post, and the same goes for those who use the Post for advertising," said Samet, 56, an attorney who lives in Potomac. "What they do with that information is their own decision."
Samet, who declined to name any of the advertisers contacted, emphasized that none of them was threatened with a boycott nor was anyone pressured into advertising elsewhere. "But they certainly have the option of contacting the Post and telling them that the coverage is unfair," he added.
The Post was contacted regarding the campaign, but did not comment.
As part of its campaign, Eye On The Post placed two ads in last week's WJW, one of which announced the initiative and urged readers to support it by contacting a Post advertiser and discussing the newspaper's Middle East reporting. The other ad headlined "The Washington Post Is An Enemy Of Israel" focused on two recent Israel-related front-page stories that were "particularly egregious" in their negative and one-sided depiction of the Jewish state, according to Samet. Both were written by Scott Wilson, The Washington Post's Jerusalem bureau chief.
One story, which appeared on Dec. 15 [2007], stated that Israel's "punishing" restriction of imports into the Gaza Strip has reduced the territory "to beggar status."
The other story, which appeared Dec. 20 [2007], said that Israel discriminates against its Arab citizens in a process that "mirrors in many ways the broader one taking place between Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied territories."
The ad attacking those stories said the Post "doesn't tell its readers" many relevant and newsworthy things, including that economic sanctions have been imposed on Gaza because Gaza is the source of continuing rocket strikes against Israel and that the charter of Hamas, which now governs Gaza, "explicitly calls for the violent destruction of Israel."
Some of the same points were made in a recent rebuttal of the two articles by CAMERA (the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), which said in a recent e-mailing that the two cited stories "reconfirmed the paper's narrow, misleading perspective on Arab-Israeli news."
The Dec. 20 [2007] article, according to CAMERA, included "basic factual errors," such as the assertion that Israeli Arabs are "excluded" from serving in the Israeli military. Instead, they are not required to serve "as most Israeli Jews are," CAMERA stated. "No law stops them from volunteering."
In addition, Wilson mistakenly wrote that Israeli Jews outnumber Israeli Arabs five to one, whereas the correct ratio is "about four to one," according to CAMERA, which noted that "Israeli Arabs enjoy the same legal rights, if not economic and social standing, as Israeli Jews."
Eye On The Post was formed in April 2002 in the wake of the Post's "false reporting of a massacre in Jenin [in the West Bank]" by the Israeli military following a deadly Passover bombing in Israel, according to the organization's Web site.
Prior to the current campaign, the group's activities have consisted mainly of conducting speakers' forums, analyzing Post articles and e-mailing media alerts to members of its mailing list that note the publication of new and allegedly problematic articles.
Shortly after the organization was founded, it called on readers to stop buying the newspaper for one week. Although the results of that campaign were difficult to gauge, Samet said: "I think we got our message across."
