At a time of intense media criticism from multiple viewpoints, a national broadcast journalist spoke in Albany Sunday about changes he’d like to see.
Josh Levs spoke to a packed house at the Sidney Albert Albany Jewish Community Center in Albany.
Amidah Albany co-founder Laura Weisblatt says the group was formed after October 7 and Sunday’s event was dedicated to educating the community. She says Albany is not insulated from incidents of anti-Semitism.
"Including very anti-Israel speakers brought to public forums such as public libraries. You know, we've seen shooting at a synagogue. In fact, it was, my child was in preschool that day of the synagogue where there was a shooting, a man who yelled Free Palestine and shot at the synagogue with a shotgun while preschool children were inside,” Weisblatt said.
In December 2023 a man fired two rounds from a shotgun at Temple Israel on New Scotland Avenue. Early this month 29-year old Mufid Fawaz Alkhader of Schenectady pleaded guilty to civil rights and firearm charges. He will be sentenced in June.
Levs discussed the importance of journalistic integrity and combating disinformation, particularly regarding Jewish history and the Israel-Gaza conflict.
“Because in this era with disinformation everywhere, people desperately need trustworthy sources of truth that tune out the noise," said Levs. "And when people do that in our newsroom, in your newsroom, in any newsroom, they're fulfilling a mission that is important as the military, is important as police, as important as teachers. They're standing for truth.”
Levs is a Capital District native who attended JCC events as a youngster, graduated from Bethlehem Central High School and eventually joined NPR, and then moved to become CNN's lead on-air fact checker.
Now in podcasting, Levs tells WAMC he believes the free press ideally should apply a single set of rules to all news stories. He reflected on the “New York Post”'s controversial 2020 story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which had been left at a computer repair shop. According to the shop owner, it allegedly contained files documenting political corruption by Hunter's father, then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
“What happened there was more of this problem of media getting caught up in political pressures and political moments and being a little afraid to just say, 'OK let's tune out all the noise, all of it. What do we know for sure?' So in that case, they should not rush to say, 'oh, there's this news about Hunter's laptop.' They should do the same thing every time. What they should do is investigate. What do we really know? Who did this person manipulate? Did this person change anything on the computer? Did this person legally obtain (which he did not technically), legally obtain this? And what are our ethics around reporting that have those conversations, tune out all the political pressures and be a powerful, beautiful source of truth,” Levs said.
Event attendee Susan Ungerman recently traveled to the Nova Festival site in Israel where Hamas attacked festival attendees on Oct. 7, 2023. The Albany resident says she came home with a new attitude regarding how news of the conflict is being presented to America.
“I have not found any information disseminated in the local news that shows a two-side story. Everything has been biased that I have seen,” Ungerman said.
The Israel-Hamas war has been largely a battle over information, which each side accusing the other of lying about developments and the Western press fighting allegations of favoritism in its coverage.
Levs’ advice as a fact-checker: "if someone shows you got something wrong, correct it and say we have new information."
"Maybe not so much in public [media], but what we have in the big media elsewhere is corporate control, in which people become afraid for their jobs, and you don't have at the very top a fierce commitment to truth,” said Levs.
Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., 10 days after the White House began restricting access to the Associated Press amid a dispute over what to call the Gulf of Mexico, the news agency sued three Trump administration officials over access to presidential events. Citing freedom of speech, AP says its editorial independence and ability to gather and report the news is being interfered with. Defending freedom of speech, Levs there should be a seat at the table for any legitimate news organization with strict journalistic standards that is open to correcting its errors.
