NYT dis’likes’ J’lem chief’s Netiquette

Jodi Rudoren, recently installed Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times, has been assigned a social media watchdog after she posted several controversial messages on Facebook during the recent Israel-Hamas conflict.

As the fighting was taking place, Rudoren wrote that Palestinians had “limited lives,” were “ho-hum” about the death of their loved ones, and possessed an “aspiration to martyrdom,” setting off a wave of criticism that Rudoren was biased in favor of the Israeli narrative in her reporting.

Public Editor Margaret Sullivan wrote about the issue on Wednesday and acknowledged that Rudoren had a “rocky start” as Jerusalem chief, and that she had posted some controversial Twitter postings in February “within a few days of taking the post.”

Sullivan added that assigning Rudoren a social media editor was a “necessary step,” to forestall “forgetting about social media.”

Rudoren apologized for the controversy and said, “I just wasn’t careful enough.”