Committee for Accuracy in Middle East
Reporting in America (CAMERA)
Eric Rozenman, Washington Director

On Thursday evening, January 12, Director Eric Rozenman, from the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, spoke to the Washington Internship Program about the roots of errors in news coverage. Before coming to CAMERA, Rozenman worked as editor of the Near East Report, a staff member for former Congressman Robert Shamansky, and a reporter for the Ohio Scripps-Howard Newspapers. Rozenman’s freelance pieces on U.S. and Middle East subjects appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer, Jerusalem Post, Washington Post, and Middle East Quarterly, among many other papers, and he is the author of the novel Total Jihad. Rozenman also served as executive editor of B’nai B’rith’s International Jewish Monthly magazine and the Washington Jewish Week. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University and a master’s in American history from Ohio State University. CAMERA monitors U.S. and overseas news coverage related to the Arab-Israeli conflict and brings inaccuracies to the attention of reporters and the public at large.

In class, Rozenman distributed newspaper articles containing factual mistakes or distortions and showed students how these inaccuracies related to the news cycle – whether because stories were printed too soon before information could be confirmed or reporters repeated errors made by other media sources without checking statements that had been refuted. In some instances, untruths were planted with foreign news sources, and by the time inaccuracies were recognized, iconic images had already formed in the mind of the public. News outlets are likely to copy big stories from one another but not corrections published days later. Rozenman taught students how to identify second-hand sources and be skeptical of unreliable coverage. He also played some CNN footage on a large-screen television in WIP’s viewing room and identified mistaken impressions caused by historical clips from stock footage inserted into unrelated news items as though the former were background. Rozenman sensitized students to camera angle and other cinematic techniques that contribute to erroneous interpretation just as word choice and connation can be misleading in written text. In journalism, a statement is generally corroborated by the presence of two sources. Therefore, just two people who are ill-informed (or lying) can create media mistakes – especially when pressure for twenty-four-hour news inhibits fact-checking. The following month, CAMERA sent WIP examples of errors in prominent news stories about Ariel Sharon, the prime minister of Israel who suffered a massive stroke.

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