Past Press Release

Message "Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness" by Dr. Rodney Brooks, Tifereth Israel at 11:00 AM on August 24, 2002

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Maryland, Monday, August 19, 2002 - Dr. Rodney Brooks will deliver a talk "Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness" at Tifereth Israel at 11:00 AM on August 24, 2002. The brief message will be part of the regular Saturday morning service, and will be devoted to The Washington Post's coverage of the Mideast conflict. Journalistic Codes of Ethics will be presented and used as a basis for categorizing specific violations that have occurred at The Washington Post. A question and answer session will follow. Tifereth Israel is located at 7701 16th St., NW about a mile below the Beltway.

Dr. Brooks notes, "When I began to realize the extent of the bias in the Post, I said to myself, `This problem is serious, and it's happening in our own backyard. We may not be able to fix the problems of the Mideast, but if Washington Jews can't at least try to fix this glaring problem, who will?' So I began writing letters to the editor, and wrote about 50, without one being published. In the meantime, I became active with others in the community who were also concerned and joined them."

Dr. Brooks is Chairman of the Information Resources Committee of EyeOnThePost.org, the recently formed organization that identifies Media Bias and poor reporting in The Washington Post. Dr. Brooks was active with BoycottThePost.org, and helped that organization develop to become EyeOnThePost.org. Dr. Brooks has single-handedly done a retroactive analysis of 114 articles for April-May, measuring the balance of reporting based on column inches and the use of substitutes for the word "terrorist," an epidemic problem in the media. His research indicates that for every column inch The Washington Post devotes to the Israeli perspective, the paper devotes 3.6 inches to the Palestinian perspective.

The Information Resources Committee at EyeOnThePost.org conducts daily content analysis of articles published in The Washington Post. The Information Resources Committee members analyze articles against a backdrop of the journalistic Code of Ethics that The Washington Post claims to uphold as a member of The American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Dr. Brooks, who does not like to use the title "Doctor," has a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University (1963). He retired from the National Institutes of Health in 1999, following a 25-year career of research on medical imaging methods. Dr. Brooks says he was never a political "agitator" but he believes that Mideast bias in The Washington Post is egregious, going far beyond that of other papers.

EyeOnThePost.org exists to serve the public interest by challenging The Washington Post to uphold the ethical standards to which they claim to adhere. EyeOnThePost.org is a volunteer, grassroots effort that exists by the charitable contributions of its supporters.


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