every day brings more evidence of the level of control here in the empire, of the narrative. you must toe the line or you will loose money, and influence;

Hosam Salem, a Palestinian photographer who freelanced for the New York Times for four years in Gaza, reports today that the newspaper dismissed him after a pro-Israel organization alerted the paper to Facebook posts in which he had expressed support for Palestinian resistance.

Salem says that the Israel lobby organization Honest Reporting, which exists to attack the Palestinian narrative in the west, succeeded in discrediting him and two other Palestinian journalists who worked for the Times.

“What is taking place is a systematic effort to distort the image of Palestinian journalists as being incapable of trustworthiness and integrity, simply because we cover the human rights violations that the Palestinian people undergo on a daily basis at hands of the Israeli army,” Salem wrote today on Facebook and Twitter, in a thread that has been widely retweeted, 5000 times this morning.

The case stands in stark contrast to the three Jewish reporters, Ethan Bronner, Isabel Kershner, and David Brooks, who carried on writing about the issue for the New York Times even when their children were enlisted in the Israeli Defense Forces. The Times executive editor in 2010 overruled the public editor’s recommendation that Bronner be removed from the post of Jerusalem bureau chief saying that those who questioned his bias should not “be allowed to deny the rest of our audience the highest quality of reporting.”.......more..........