How To Write Bias In Six Easy Steps: Analyzing The Quest's Coverage Of "Shut Down Reed for Palestine"

The Reed College Quest catapulted itself into campus-wide controversy last month when it published an article reporting on a November 9 protest against the Israel-Palestine conflict that some have accused of inaccurately portraying pro-Palestine activism as antisemitic and violent. The article, titled “Reed College Protest Ends in Four Student Arrests, Demonstrators Chant ‘Globalize the Intifada,’” was first published on the Quest’s website on November 10 to immediate backlash. A week later, a modified version of the article appeared on the front page of the Quest’s print edition. In a Letter to the Editors reflecting on reactions to the article, Quest contributor Sam King — who co-wrote the article with Quest editor Declan Bradley — said, “I’m satisfied that our piece meets the highest standard of journalistic practice.”

As former Quest editors with a collective thirteen semesters of experience, we believe that “Reed College Protest ends in Four Student Arrests” is shamelessly biased, shockingly incompetent, and fails to meet the lowest standards of journalistic practice. At best, the article is grossly negligent in its disregard for basic journalistic principles. At worst, it is a miscarriage of research and reporting, an insult to its readers, and a textbook demonstration of how not to cover the news. 

There have been three versions of the article in question: one published on the Quest’s website on November 10 (accessible via the Wayback Machine), an updated version of that article from November 11, and a version published in print the following week. This letter is mainly concerned with the updated web version. The original web article uncritically repeated professor Marat Grinberg’s claim that one term the protestors used, “Intifada,” meant “violence against Jews … everywhere, beyond Israel,” and that the protest was “unadulterated antisemitism.” The Quest seemingly failed to fact-check Grinberg’s definition with even a simple Google search; he was the article’s sole source on the word “Intifada,” positioning his definition as unambiguously correct. Following a wave of criticism, the Quest removed Grinberg’s comments and replaced them with a more accurate, less inflammatory definition from Encyclopedia Britannica that makes no mention of violence against Jews. The print version is the article’s least inept iteration, addressing some of the concerns we raise below, but even this version has an anti-activist agenda woven into its very fabric that surface-level edits cannot address; the changes can only be improvements in the sense that painting over a patch of black mold “improves” the condition of a house.

1. How To Bury The Lede

News articles typically begin by explaining the essential information every reader needs to know, with non-essential background information coming later. Most people won’t finish reading any given article, making it imperative to place the most important facts as early as possible. 

The headline “Reed College Protest Ends in Four Student Arrests, Demonstrators Chant ‘Globalize the Intifada,’” implies that the Quest is covering a protest. But in the web version of the article, any account of the protest follows approximately a thousand words of background information. The article does not mention the arrests — the most newsworthy part of the story — until its final paragraphs. 

Instead of forefronting the news, this so-called news article forefronts a number of background details: the protest’s occurrence on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the alleged extremism of National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), and Bradley and King’s adversarial relationship with the organizers — Reed’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The second paragraph does nothing but define the word “Intifada,” which in the article’s original version is explicitly said to promote violence against Jews. The placement of these facts at the beginning of the article, where the most important facts of a story should go, implies that these are the most important facts of the story. Taken together they signal to the reader that the protest was unreasonable, extremist, and antisemitic before that reader has had a chance to hear about the actual protest. The protest is a mere accessory to the Quest’s accusation that it was antisemitic.

2. How To Pick Cherries

Nearly every quote the article attributes to the protestors includes the word “intifada.” The authors detail how the protestors chanted “There is only one solution / intifada revolution,” “Intifada intifada / long live the intifada,” and “globalize the intifada,” in the final case even making the strange choice to provide an audio recording of the protestors reciting the chant. (The article also quotes three other chants not mentioning intifada). At multiple points, the article calls attention to a banner carried by individuals at the head of the protest reading “Intifada everywhere.” 

It is absurd to imply, as the article does, that the protestors had no comment on the Israel-Palestine conflict except “intifada.” A post from SJP lists eleven chants for the protestors to use, only two of which include “intifada.” Photographs of the protest show signs with messages such as “Free Palestine,” “Ceasefire,” “End the Occupation,” and “Genocide is not Self Defense,” and only two signs reading “Intifada.” This especially egregious example of cherry-picking persists in all versions of the article, but its rhetorical purpose is only clear in the original web version where “intifada” was defined as “violence against Jews.” The article alleges the word “intifada” to be antisemitic while simultaneously framing it as the protest’s primary message — selective reporting that paints the protest as antisemitic. 

The signs and chants excluded from the article paint a more nuanced, accurate picture of the protest. In their own words, the protestors want a free Palestine — an end to what they view as the genocide of Palestinians and the occupation of stolen land. Furthermore, chants such as “Not another nickel, not another dime! / No more money for Israel’s crimes!” clarify an opposition to US support of Israel. The article only pays lip service to the mission of the protestors once, in the first sentence of the article, where they quote SJP as saying that the protest calls for “an immediate ceasefire, an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, [and] an end to the siege on Gaza.” Nowhere else does the article represent the protest as anything more than unadulterated antisemitism. 

3. How To Forget What “Report” Means

Even when the article remembers that it’s meant to be covering a protest, the state of that coverage is dire. The article barely alludes to the basic structure of the protest: that it was a walkout which gathered in front of Vollum before marching across campus and taking buses to a larger protest in downtown Portland. The 20-30 minutes the protestors spent in front of Vollum is only mentioned to note the presence of one individual carrying the flag of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (cherry-picking much?). The description of the protest downtown is more detailed, though still lacking. The article briefly explains the teach-in, the main substance of the protest, before focusing on a group of protestors who split off from the main crowd to enter the World Trade Center (WTC). The authors seemingly did not follow them, so what follows is a description of what activity they could see from the street, supplemented by a disappointingly brief interview with one (1) eyewitness from inside the building. We did not attend the protest, and thus we cannot say what newsworthy details lie in the gaps of this narrative. Unfortunately, the people whose job it is to provide a complete account of the protest failed to do so. 

The article summarizes hours of speeches at the teach-in with a single sentence, without providing any quotes or statements from any of the speakers. As for the protestors, the article only quotes chants and the aforementioned singular eyewitness from the WTC. The reason protesters attend protests is to spread a message, in this case to condemn Israel’s invasion of Gaza and the US Government’s support of that invasion; the authors could have asked anyone in the crowd why they were protesting and published their response. Did Bradley and King forget they could talk to the protestors? The alternative is deliberate omission of their words. When the article paints the protest as antisemitic it implicates the protestors in that antisemitism, raising the pivotal question of whether their alleged antisemitism was willful or unwitting. This question belongs to the authors of the article, who have a responsibility to do more than speculate about its answer — a responsibility their reporting neglects with damning incuriosity.

In his LTTE, Sam King claims this incuriosity is simply good journalistic practice: “I know the Reedies who marched had good intentions, but to say so in print, I would’ve first needed to find someone who could speak knowledgeably about the feelings of the entire student body.” This claim is patently absurd. Journalists somehow manage to discuss the feelings of groups all the time — because groups are made up of individuals, and they can talk to those individuals to learn how they feel. Ideally, journalists talk to a large number of individuals in a group to get a representative sample of opinions. This is called a “survey,” and given that co-writer Declan Bradley calls himself an “aspiring data journalist,” we would hope that he is familiar with the concept. The members of the student body at the protest could have spoken knowledgeably about their own feelings, had they only been asked. 

4. How To Blow A Dog Whistle

The article’s web version features a lone paragraph reading, “The Quest has at no point accused the SJP or any of its members of antisemitism.”. With the removal of Grinberg’s straightforward admission that he (and the writers) understand the word “Intifada” as antisemitic, what remains is not one clear accusation of antisemitism against SJP, but a series of dog whistles. 

As stated above, the emphasis on the inclusion of “intifada” in chants is an attempt to associate SJP with intifada, and therefore with antisemitism. But removing Grinberg’s quote merely appeases those upset by the article’s most transparent accusation of antisemitism, leaving more coded accusations for people who will happily fill in the blanks. This is what dog whistles do. They let people express their opinions to their like minded peers while denying responsibility for those same opinions to anyone they offend.

The prevalence of Intifada is not the only dog whistle for SJP’s alleged antisemitism. Bradley and King claim to be just asking questions about the fact that the protest took place on the anniversary of Kristallnacht when they clearly mean to imply that protesting Israel on this date is antisemitic. Reed President Audrey Bilger echoed their sentiment in a statement to the Reed Community when she wrote, “This timing is a threatening provocation hearkening back to the murder of Jewish people.” Furthermore, the article characterizes NSJP in part by their usage of images of paratroopers in materials published by some SJP chapters (though not Reed’s). This detail is lifted from an article by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) which considers NSJP an extremist group whose “demonization” of Zionism is functionally, even if not intentionally, antisemitic. The Quest links this article but does not name the ADL as their source, and the significance of this imagery is unclear unless you follow their link to where the ADL claims that this imagery is supportive of Hamas and violence against Jews. Bradley and King won't finish drawing that connection for you. Whether or not you agree with Bilger or the ADL, the article does — it just won’t admit it.

If the authors are competent journalists, they know exactly what they are doing. In their article, the Quest repeatedly gestures towards SJP being antisemitic and thinks that because they don’t explicitly verbalize the accusation, they’re free of all responsibility for housing it in their piece. Journalists are supposed to highlight dog whistles, not use them.

5. How To Disrespect Your Peers

Beyond the blatant problems with the article’s reporting, the Quest’s interactions with their peers at Reed’s SJP were deeply disrespectful. If your understanding of the events of November 9th comes solely from the Quest’s reporting, it might be easy to forget that SJP’s organizers were dealing with four of their (and the Quest’s) peers being jailed and charged with felonies. Nevertheless, the Quest set a short and unyielding deadline for SJP’s response, failing to recognize them as a group of full-time students without a PR team. The authors’ attempt to crash an SJP meeting probably did not make them any more willing to talk. According to the article, the only comment SJP provided was in response to a question about the protest coinciding with the anniversary of Kristallnacht — which SJP, as we do, understood to be a coded accusation of antisemitism. That Bradley and King are surprised by their difficulties getting a response from SJP would seem to betray an entitlement that is hard to fathom.

6. How To Fail Your Community

The purpose of the Quest is to serve the Reed community. In its protest coverage, Reed’s only independent newspaper has treated that community with hostility and disdain. There was a story about four Reed students protesting and being arrested. That story barely saw the light of day, buried under Bradley and King’s depiction of the movement for Palestinian liberation as extremist and antisemitic. The Quest as an institution is uniquely positioned to shed light on campus affairs. While we hope this article will not hamper the Quest’s ability to do that, we suspect that it will. For the Quest to be able to report effectively, students have to trust that they will be treated with respect and that their stories will be investigated ethically and thoroughly. “Reed College Protest Ends In Four Student Arrests” has eroded that trust. As former Quest editors, we know how vital the Quest can be to the Reed community, and that has only made us more disappointed in what it has become. The student body deserves better than the quality of reporting the current editorial board has allowed, and we hope that, in the coming elections, the student body will hold the Quest to a higher standard. We want to see trust between the Quest and its community come back. It’s now the Quest’s responsibility to make that happen.