I wasn’t at the Kingston Common Council debate about the resolution backing a ceasefire in Gaza. I did, however, closely read Rokosz Most’s January 17 article about the debate because the war and its implications at home and abroad have consumed me.
I think reporter Most has transgressed the most essential rule of the reporter’s handbook: he made the article about himself, not about the topic he was reporting on. He editorialized egregiously, injecting his own opinions time and again.
Some examples:
• Mr. Most focused much of the piece on Mark Klein, a man obviously concerned, even distressed, by events in Gaza and its resonances at home. We learn from Mr. Most that Mr. Klein was dressed in a “tailored suit” and that as he approached the reporter he “waved” a photograph that purported to show collusion between an AP/CNN reporter and Hamas leader Yaya Sinwar. Was he waving the piece of paper, which implies an action made overdramatically or histrionically, or did he come over to show a reporter a piece of evidence he deemed important? Mr. Most’s choice of words is editorializing out of a textbook.
• Why did Mr. Most report about Mr. Klein’s choice of a tailored suit? Mr. Most does not describe the clothing of any other person he reports about, save for a group of spectators in the courtroom who wore tee shirts with political slogans, which was apt, because it identified their position in the debate. Does he think Mr. Klein is part of the international Jewish banking conspiracy, that he has the Jewish money to buy his suits on Savile Row, or perhaps simply that Mr. Klein dressed for the occasion in an old-school sort of way? We’ll never know. In fact, Phil Erner’s outfit, a yellow jumpsuit, was far more interesting (they’re both in the accompanying photograph) and in my opinion more worthy of comment, if comment about clothing was to be made in a piece about impassioned speakers debating one of the truly critical issues of the moment. I say with this absolute respect to Mr. Erner, whom I do not know personally, and to his choice of wardrobe.
• Mr. Most writes, “Before the speaking begins, Klein can’t contain his loathing any longer. He points over to the group gathered on the other half of the bench. They are wearing Covid face masks, holding signs and wearing shirts printed with messages to end the ceasefire. ‘You can see how horrible these people are! [Mr. Klein says]’‘I can?’ I ask.”
Aside from the fact that these people on the bench doubtless wanted to enact a ceasefire, not end it, why did Mr. Most use the phrase “can’t contain his loathing?” Again, editorializing 101. And why did he report his own question (“I can?”) as part of the story? This piece only pretends to be a news article; rather, it’s a way to frame Mr. Most own virtue-signaling. It’s about Mr. Most’s apparently favorite subject, his own subjectivity.
• Mr. Most writes, “[Mr. Klein] repeated the hoary old chestnut about the babies being decapitated, and added the detail that their heads couldn’t be matched to the right bodies afterwards. . . . This claim, without Mr. Klein’s embellishment of the mismatched bodies, was originally made by Tal Heinrich, a spokeswoman for Benjamin Netanyahu. The slaughter was purported to have occurred at the kibbutz of Kfar Azah, during a murderous rampage by agents of Hamas. Once spoken, a million times repeated, and still not yet proven.” Aha, Mr. Most has done some research and knows who first reported the chestnut!
In the first place, as everyone knows, for a chestnut to be hoary it has to be at least four months old. A three-month-old chestnut is still a fresh chestnut. But apart from the choice of phrase, Mr. Most’s misuse of a cliché, amplified by a second cliché, is another attempt to heap ridicule on the person he’s interviewing. Editorialization 201. Mr. Most now advances to the sophomore-level course.
I do agree with Mr. Most that the allegations of the beheading of children are yet to be proven. But it’s not proven that they didn’t happen, and there are credible allegations of the beheadings of Israeli soldiers by Hamas, of gruesome acts of sexual mutilation of women, of run-of-the-mill sexual violence that may not register on Mr. Most’s flat-panel, and of examples of children being killed in front of parents and parents in front of children. Perhaps it’s true that Hamas leave beheadings only to adult victims and gives children a pass, except when they simply kill or kidnap them.
Mr. Most goes on to say that “Mr. Klein’s outrage and empathy appeared to end with Israeli civilians and hostages.” Why does Hudson Valley One permit this level of editorializing? And why does Hudson Valley One go to press with the many syntactical and punctuation errors that a good copyeditor would catch and which are too numerous for inclusion? And I’m focusing only on Mr. Most’s interactions with Mr. Klein. There are similar examples elsewhere in the piece.
For an example of excellent reporting, I refer readers to the above-the-fold article on the same front page headlined “Amazon sized.” Frances Marion Platt has always been a model of effective, honest, carefully written reporting, whether it’s a restaurant review or this hard-hitting story about the strange sleight-of-hand that appears to characterize an application to the Modena planning-board. She reports one damning fact after the next, without injecting herself into the discussion. The one time she might have used the pronoun I, she refers to herself this way: “attempts by this reporter to determine. . . .”
Finally, throughout the article, Mr. Most uses the phrase “those who identify as Jewish,” as in this example: “Those who identify as Jewish appear to be split on the matter”? As a Jew, I’ve never before heard this phrase. Speaking for myself, I don’t “identify” as Jewish. I’m a Jew. And how did he know the people he references were Jewish, or “identified” as such? Yellow stars on their jackets? Skullcaps? Perhaps Mr. Most betrays too much of his subjectivity here. Why didn’t he write, “The speakers who stated they were Jewish appear to be split on the matter”?
I have no sympathy for the kind of reporting Mr. Most exemplifies. And it’s too late for a do-over.
Join the family! 
