Fox and Fagin

The New York Times's David Carr, who has been kind to us in the past, took aim at Fox News yesterday for airing a caricature of a Times reporter, Jacques Steinberg. The column implied that the caricature was anti-Semitic, saying Fox used a "technique familiar to students of vintage German propaganda," and that it make Mr. Steinberg look like the Charles Dickens "Oliver Twist" character Fagin the Jew. Mr. Carr said another Times reporter, Bill Carter, viewed the caricature of Mr. Steinberg as "anti-Semitic." Mr. Carr writes that a Fox spokesman "called my suggestion that there was something anti-Semitic about the depiction of Mr. Steinberg 'vile and untrue.'"

Well, let us just say that if the folks at Fox News Channel are indeed a bunch of anti-Semites, the Jews are in luck, because whoever is in charge at Fox is running one of the most philosemitic networks on all of television. Its coverage of Israel has been more fair and balanced than we have seen on other networks and even than, taken as a whole, that of the New York Times. The smart money would chalk up this brouhaha to the latest in the newspaper war between the Times and the Wall Street Journal, which shares a corporate parent with Fox News Channel.