WIESENTHAL CENTER CONDEMNS LA TIMES SHILLING FOR HAMAS

"The Status of a Sagely Byline" (BackSpin)
The directors of the Simon Wiesenthal Center got op-ed space in the LA Times to take issue with that paper's decision to publish a commentary by Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzook:

Let's be clear: This issue is not about giving ink to Hamas' views. Their statements and actions deserve real-time coverage, just the way the statements and actions of Hitler and Stalin received coverage by the most prestigious newspapers in the world's most important democracy. But such people do not deserve the status of a sagely byline, because that destroys the distinction between honorable men and women bound by basic principles of humanity and the despots and terrorists eager to destroy those values.

If the criteria is simply because "it is an important story," then would the editors have welcomed articles by Auschwitz's Dr. Josef Mengele justifying his gruesome medical experiments, or by the Virginia Tech killer explaining why he committed mass murder? Of course, newspapers have the right and responsibility to inform their readers about dictators and purveyors of terror. But they don't have the right to bestow editorial credibility on those bent on genocide.