The spectacle of the German media giant Axel Springer investigating one of its US media outlets for reporting truthful information about a wealthy and influential pro-Israel couple is a startling demonstration of the impact of the conglomerate’s explicit ideological agenda (FAIR.org, 11/5/21).
Business Insider (1/5/24) accused Neri Oxman of “multiple instances of plagiarism in which she passed off writing from other sources as her own without citing the original in any way.“
Business Insider (1/4/24, 1/4/24, 1/5/24) reported how Neri Oxman, a former MIT professor whose billionaire husband led the crusade that forced out the president of Harvard under accusations of plagiarism, had herself engaged in sloppy research that could similarly be described as plagiarizing.
It was a proud case of a media outlet holding an absurdly wealthy political partisan, hedge fund investor Bill Ackman, accountable. Ackman had initially pressured his alma mater to oust its president Claudine Gay for allegedly failing to condemn campus antisemitism, but then focused on charges (put forth by right-wing activist Christopher Rufo—Washington Post, 1/4/24) that Gay had improperly cited academic work. Ackman asserted that Harvard would expel a student who committed “much less” plagiarism than Gay (Washington Post, 1/8/24).
But rather than celebrating its outlet’s achievement, Business Insider‘s owner is launching an investigation into the reporting on Oxman, responding to voluminous complaints from Ackman. “Axel Springer is conducting its own internal investigation into how the stories came about,” the Wrap (1/7/24) reported. While Business Insider‘s global editor-in-chief Nicholas Carlson said he stood by the story, he said Ackman and others have “raised concerns about our reporting process, as well as the motivation for publishing the stories.”
Investigating motives
The Guardian (1/3/24) reported that Bill Ackman, “who accused Gay of antisemitism and plagiarism, was a major player in what increasingly became a right-wing campaign against the Harvard president.”
Since the Hamas attacks of October 7, Ackman has been a vocal critic of pro-Palestine sentiment on American campuses, especially at Harvard. In McCarthyite fashion, he demanded to know the names of students who spoke out against Israeli policy (Fox News, 10/10/23). And he was a huge player in the right-wing movement to force Harvard to remove Gay (Guardian, 1/3/24), whose hiring he argued was an example of “racism against white people” (Twitter, 1/3/24).
Ackman has been vocally upset by the reporting on his wife. His fans are also fuming. Tunku Varadarajan of the Wall Street Journal (1/7/24), who sees Ackman as a warrior against pro-Palestinian campus activism, said the Business Insider reporting was “an attack on his wife” that “may intimidate other would-be critics from joining the public fray.”
Springer is investigating the motives behind Business Insider’s investigation. That’s where things get dangerous. The New York Post (1/8/24) reported, “Ackman took aim at the possible motives behind Business Insider’s coverage of Oxman—alleging that the editor of the stories is a ‘known anti-Zionist.’” The editor in question is John Cook.
Springer is a bit like a German analog to the Murdoch empire: a huge company with an ideological agenda. In Springer‘s case, that agenda includes support for Israel, along with the trans-Atlantic alliance and market economics (Foreign Policy, 1/6/22; Guardian, 4/13/23; Deutsche Welle, 4/16/23). During a previous Israeli assault on Gaza, Mathias Döpfner, chair and CEO of Springer, told staffers that didn’t like the company flying the Israeli flag at its headquarters that they should leave (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 6/21/21).
When the group bought Politico, FAIR (11/5/21) raised concerns that the corporate position that it would expect its editorial staff to be partial to Israel would jeopardize fair reporting on the Middle East and US policy on the Middle East. Indeed, “Kasem Raad was fired from his job at Welt TV, a subsidiary of German media company Axel Springer, for questioning internal pro-Israel policies” (Al Jazeera, 11/1/23).
Döpfner made his position clear in a Politico column (10/27/23) that argued that Israel’s war against Gaza wasn’t a mere regional issue, but the frontline in a global war between the enlightened West and the barbaric East. He imagined a world in which evil triumphed:
Europe would become an annex of Asia, with China defining the rules, and the Middle East would return to the Middle Ages, with no possible challenge to Islamic fundamentalism.
The company’s political discipline is now apparently coming down on Business Insider’s staff, a chilling affront to editorial independence.
‘Impressive job of deflecting’
The Springer investigation will likely delve into arguments that Business Insider editor John Cook’s wife said that he had with her family about Zionism (Awl, 6/14/11).
By what rationale is Cook, who has a lengthy track record as a mainstream reporter and editor, some kind of fanatical Palestine partisan, at least in the eyes of Springer’s ideological enforcers? There are two things Ackman and his posse will likely bring up.
Andrew Adler, publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, was forced to apologize and resign after writing a column (1/13/12) suggesting that Israel could assassinate then-President Barack Obama (ABC, 1/20/12; Guardian, 1/20/12; Haaretz, 1/23/12). Cook–then a staffer at Gawker, and later the site’s executive editor–was the national journalist primarily responsible for calling attention to Adler’s piece (Gawker, 1/20/12). Tablet (1/23/12), a conservative Jewish outlet, said that Adler was in the wrong and Cook was a fine reporter, but asserted that “Cook wrote a post that may not have been meant as a dog whistle for antisemites, but which certainly had that effect.”
The previous year, Cook’s wife, Allison Benedikt, caused a stir with an essay in the Awl (6/14/11) about her childhood identification and adult disillusionment with Israel. She describes, after meeting Cook, learning from him “about the Israelis being occupiers, about Israel not being a real democracy, about the dangers of ethnic nationalism .” One line about a family trip to Israel stands out in this case: “Once in Tel Aviv, John [Cook] confronts my sister and her husband on their ‘morally bankrupt decision to live in Israel.’” Lest anyone think that such an essay would get lost in the void of the Internet over the last decade, the right-wing Jewish press is still obsessed with Benedikt to this day (Algemeiner, 3/20/23, 8/24/23).
For his part, Cook has appeared unshaken, telling Ackman on Twitter (1/6/24) that he has “done an impressive job of deflecting the plagiarism claims of your wife.” Cook added that the “double standards and overbearing effort to defend your wife against the same claims you used to discredit Gay screams of hypocrisy and nepotism.”
NewsGuild ‘disappointed’
Nothing in Cook’s history undermines the information Business Insider reported about Oxman. But given Springer’s expectation that its staff support various political positions, including endorsing the “right of existence of the State of Israel,” Ackman is clearly hoping that Cook’s previous impure thoughts about the Jewish state get him in trouble with his outlet’s owners.
The NewsGuild of New York chapter at Business Insider released a statement (1/9/24) saying it was “disappointed” in the parent company’s investigation in “response to the attacks on our members’ coverage of Neri Oxman and Bill Ackman.”
It added:
We are watching closely to ensure that the journalistic principles and workplace protections we fought for in our contract are not compromised by Axel Springer or anyone else.
Will Cook meet the same fate as Gay? Maybe, maybe not. What is clear is that FAIR’s earlier concern about Springer’s editorial policy about Israel was warranted. If nothing else, this investigation into Business Insider will make editors at Springer think twice about publishing reported material that may anger a pro-Israel mogul.