The Pulitzer committee plans to announce its annual prize in investigative journalism on Monday, and it is expected that it will award it to the New York Times for an eighteen-part series on New York state’s ḥasidic schools. To Jonathan Tobin, the series is wholly underserving of such a prestigious accolade:
As I wrote when the series started last September, the question of adequate educational standards in these schools is a legitimate one. If they are truly failing their children, whether out of incompetence or a belief that non-religious subjects are unimportant, it would be a tragedy that might be contributing to the already troublingly high rates of poverty in these communities.
However, it soon became apparent that the Times was interested in more than just that narrow question. Even the initial broadside—to which the paper devoted enormous resources in terms of reporters’ time (two reporters spent a full year producing the report with the aid of who knows how many researchers), space, and even the publication of a special Yiddish edition of the account—seemed unable to stick to that concern.
While some of the articles might be defensible when viewed in isolation, taken together, the series revolves around a theme that would, if directed at any other minority group, be quickly denounced as bigotry. The Times’s series portrays New York’s ḥasidic Jews as a scheming, dishonest group interested solely in advancing an obscurant religious vision, as well as willing to sacrifice their own children’s well-being and profit at the expense of their non-Jewish neighbors’ gullibility.
Part of that involves the demonization of efforts by Orthodox Jews to defend their interests in the public square. . . . What would be regarded as a normal, even laudable effort by an embattled and often misunderstood minority community seeking representation and influence in the political system was painted as a sinister effort. Had it been about community activists trying to help African Americans or Hispanics, nothing about it would have been considered remarkable, since those groups are also often mobilized largely by their churches and pastors. But when ḥasidic Jews and their rabbis played the same game, the Times depicted it as an effort to strong-arm politicians willing to . . . sell favors for votes.
Read more on JNS: https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-new-york-times-unethical-war-on-chassidic-schools/