Minnesota campaign a model for challenging media bias across the country

All over North America, Jews are reading the newspaper and complaining about media bias. Some boycott papers or write letters to the editor. In the Twin Cities, members of the local Jewish community took action with dramatic results. A campaign involving hundreds of prominent local citizens had an impact on the entire readership of the state's largest daily paper and captured national attention

A full-page advertisement that appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune at the beginning of April revealed that the Minneapolis Star Tribune does not identify Palestinian suicide bombers who deliberately target Israeli civilians as "terrorists."

Sponsored by Minnesotans Against Terrorism, a non-profit, grassroots organization founded by two Minnesotans who were eyewitnesses to a terrorist bombing in Jerusalem, the April 2 advertisement asks: "Aren't all Suicide Bombers Terrorists? Not According to the Star Tribune," and urges the Star Tribune to change its "double-standard" policy.

The ad was signed by more than 350 prominent Minnesotans, including U.S. Senators Paul Wellstone and Mark Dayton, Gov. Jesse Ventura, Congressmen Martin Sabo, Mark Kennedy, Bill Luther, and Betty McCullom, Attorney General Mike Hatch and former Attorney General Skip Humphrey, former Gov. Arne Carlson, former U.S. Senators Rudy Boschwitz and Dave Durenberger, former Mayors Norm Coleman and Sharon Sayles-Belton, and hundreds of other political leaders, rabbis and ministers, business executives and citizens.

The Minnesotans Against Terrorism ad states that the Star Tribune has an official policy of avoiding the term "terrorist" when Israeli Jews are targets even though the U.S. Government has officially declared Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and other violent Palestinian groups to be "terrorist organizations" because they target Israeli civilians for death. Recently, the Star Tribune's March 28 front-page story on the "Passover Massacre" in Netanya, Israel, delicately referred to terrorist spokespeople as "officials," and to Hamas as "an Islamic militant group," rather than as terrorists. And the Star Tribune has removed references to terrorism in stories supplied by national news wires, deleting the words "terrorist" and "terrorism" when reprinting syndicated articles from the New York Times and Washington Post and thereby distorting the meaning of the articles.

"Terrorism is terrorism, and terrorists are terrorists—no matter whether they are blowing up a hotel in Israel filled with Passover worshippers or the World Trade Center," says Mark Rotenberg, the Twin Cities attorney who co-founded Minnesotans Against Terrorism with local marketing executive Marc Grossfield.

Rotenberg and Grossfield were visiting Jerusalem last December 5 when a terrorist detonated himself just seconds before their taxi cab stopped at a red light in front of the Hilton Hotel. Although the two Minnesotans escaped injury, they were shocked at how U.S. media coverage of subsequent terrorist attacks in Israel was ascribed to "militants," "gunmen," or "activists"—particularly in the Star Tribune.

"We're talking about terrorists who pack their bombs with nails and bolts to shred civilians, and then intentionally locate themselves near innocent women, children, and teenagers before detonating their weapons," adds Grossfield. "Our advertisement brings together hundreds of Minnesotans from every walk of life to say: The Star Tribune is wrong in its policy of referring to suicide bombers, who deliberately try to kill as many women and children as possible, as anything but terrorists. These killers are not just ‘militants,' ‘freedom fighters,' ‘rebels' or ‘activists.' Such words suggest that their madness might be entitled to some moral justification."

The ad reproduces the February 2002 Wall Street Journal online editorial by James Taranto, who publicly condemned the Star Tribune for extending special editorial protection to Palestinian suicide bombers: "If you murder only Jews, you are not a terrorist—at least in the eyes of those who edit Minnesota's largest newspaper." Taranto concluded that the Star Tribune's policy of refraining from consistently calling terrorist groups "terrorists" in both its news and editorial commentaries is "plainly a double-standard at the expense of the Jewish state."

The creators of  the Minnesotans Against Terrorism campaign had modest expectations, hoping to raise local awareness of the Star Tribune's biased reporting. They achieved that goal: the fairness issues raised by Minnesotans Against Terrorism were covered by Twin Cities stations WCCO-TV, KMSP-TV, KSTP-TV, KARE-TV, WFTC Fox TV, KSTP-AM Radio and Minnesota Public Radio and by the Minneapolis weekly City Pages.

But their success didn't stop there.

"This has turned into something that we didn't expect," Mark Rotenberg says. "In 60 days it has blossomed into an enormous nationally recognized campaign for fairness in coverage of terrorism." Rotenberg himself has appeared on Fox News and has been interviewed on radio stations all over North America. CNBC and MSNBC covered the story, as have newspapers around the country including the Denver Post, the Wall Street Journal,  and the Washington Post.

An unexpected result has been coverage in Israel by Ha'aretz, the Jerusalem Post, and TV and radio stations. "We were able to let people in Israel know that we're not sitting by and doing nothing," says Rotenberg.

According to another member of Minnesotans Against Terrorism, Gil Mann, incoming president of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation, the coverage provided "a shot of encouragement to Israelis who are feeling isolated and abandoned." Mann was contacted by relatives in Israel who read or heard about the group's efforts and were grateful.

Minnesotans Against Terrorism achieved all this with a group of volunteers and no paid staff. "Our fundraising was very successful; in a matter of 20 days and without any materials we raised more than enough to place a full-page ad," says Rotenberg. All the funding came from private individuals, including some prominent members of the Jewish community.  The group received pro bono help from lawyers and public relations firms, so their only cost was the $17,000 they paid to place the ad.

Of the fundraising effort, Mann comments, "All we had to do was show them the Wall Street Journal editorial, and they said ‘Count me in.'"

Mann encourages others to take action against biased coverage in their local papers. "Jewish communities around the country should feel emboldened to go beyond writing letters to the editor and take their papers to task in a serious and organized way," he says. "We accomplished some major things in this community—we raised the Jewish community's awareness of bias, and we raised awareness in the general community and nationally. We hope other communities will step forward and say, ‘No more. We won't stay silent if the media distorts this coverage."

"If you make the effort, you will find the support, because it's out there, in our experience," Rotenberg says. "As Herzl said, if you will it, it is no dream."

To see the ad and find out more about Minnesotans Against Terrorism, click here.