Dishonest Journalist of the Week Award

Lynn Sweet, Washington Bureau Chief
Chicago Sun-Times
350 N. Orleans St., 10th Floor
Chicago, IL 60654
[email protected]

Copy to
Tom McNamee, Editorial page
[email protected]

23 November 2011

Dear Ms. Sweet:

I am writing in response to your rejection of several comments sent to you regarding your article, Fight against anti-Semitism still has hurdles http://tinyurl.com/7go3zl7

Your article is laudatory of Hannah Rosenthal, the State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism and noted that Ms. Rosenthal is “paying particular attention to growing Holocaust denial…”

The gravamen of the rejected comments was that the United States government should have neutral officials, not officials who are emotionally involved in the issues before them. As a daughter of a victim of Nazi persecution and a former head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an organization with a strident anti-Revisionist agenda, Ms. Rosenthal appears to be extraordinarily inappropriate to act as a monitor of what is “Denial.” Another writer submitted a question concerning the cost to the taxpayers of a “Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat…”

The comments were reasonable and interesting. Rather than post them, you ditched them.

CODOH is a Revisionist organization. We believe that it is important to defend free speech and promote open discussion. Expressing "Denial" has been made a felony in many countries, usually with the dishonest conflating of Revisionism with “anti-Semitism.” We have seen a disturbing tendency to erode free speech and discussion in the United States State Department starting with the US-sponsored declaration in the United Nations “Rejecting any form of Holocaust denial.”

With all due respect, Ms. Rosenthal seems to be part of this trend. Rather than a banal panegyric you should have asked important questions about the cross-over of private concerns and positions of public trust. For your uninspired article and your dishonest treatment of negative comments, you have been awarded CODOH’s “Dishonest Journalist of the Week” award.

Sincerely,

David Merlin
Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH)
PO Box 439016
San Ysidro CA 92143
Telephone: 209 682 5327

[NOTE: This letter was copied to press on and off campus nationwide