Three the Hard Way
Several high-profile columnists leave the media scene in very different ways.
BY MICHAEL ROBERTS
Westword

Daily newspapering in Denver has been on a bumpy ride for the past several years, with many of the jolts coming courtesy of the joint operating agreement between the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post. But despite changes in publishing schedules, format and behind-the-scenes matters, the most prominent faces seen by readers each morning have largely remained the same -- until this month, that is. News columnist Gene Amole, News international editor Holger Jensen and Post columnist Chuck Green each left the stage within a span of ten days, resulting in a turnover of local print stars that's all but unprecedented.

Of course, Amole's departure was no surprise: He announced he was dying last year and spent the time leading up to his May 12 death recording his thoughts in diary fashion (see page 13). But neither Jensen nor Green gave any indication that they were going until they were gone, and the manner in which they vanished remains under a veil of secrecy that none of the parties involved seems eager to lift.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

International news: At present, the Middle East is the mother of all tinderboxes -- a conflict in which the adversaries are armed to the teeth and equally certain that God is on their side. It's a situation seemingly made for Jensen, who filed dispatches from Israel's West Bank earlier this year.

But in the midst of this rapidly developing story, Jensen dropped off the radar screen. Shortly after his last byline, on April 17, his name, photo and biography were removed from the roster of columnists on the News's Web site, and his archived pieces couldn't be accessed using the search engine. Just over two weeks later, on May 3, Jensen resigned.

Why? No one will say, on the record or off. But despite the dearth of information, Rob Prince, a Metro State professor and member of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace, has taken up Jensen's cause. Last week, Prince, who's never met the writer ("I have a feeling we wouldn't get along," he says), penned a piece dubbed "Back to Hick Town: The Purge of Holger Jensen" for the group's Web site, www.ccmep.org. In it, he theorized that Jensen was "nailed for maintaining his integrity in his international reporting, most specifically about the crisis in the Middle East." He added, "You can be sure that the pressure from the outside, especially from some of Israel's more enthusiastic and uncritical supporters of which this town has its fair share, has been unrelenting and that tonight -- or whenever it is that they learn the news -- they'll be dancing in the streets."

This article now forms the backbone of a "Where's Holger?" page, at www.angelfire.com/ co3/alaqsaintifada/Holger/where.html, that includes an archive of Jensen columns, a section imploring visitors to e-mail complaints to the Rocky and a guest book where fans can vent.

"Officially, I know Jensen resigned," says Prince, who's printing buttons emblazoned with the phrase "Where's Holger?" "But we all know when you want to screw somebody in style in this country, that's the way you do it. It's the kind of stuff that would have made Joseph Stalin smile."

To that, Rocky editor/publisher/president John Temple says Jensen's resignation "had nothing to do with pressure from anyone in the community. The News hears from an enormous array of individuals, and the News is committed to publishing a wide range of opinions on a wide range of topics. That's reflected in our commentary section and our Letters to the Editor page.

"The notion that somehow there's been massive pressure from one side on this issue is misguided," Temple continues. "I receive a tremendous amount of praise and criticism from all sides of this particular dispute."

Jensen is well-versed in international discord. His News bio touted his more than thirty years of journalism experience spent working for Newsweek and other publications in places such as Moscow and Beirut. Among the laurels he's received is "the Overseas Press Club's top foreign reporting award for his coverage of Palestinian guerrillas and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus."

His personal life has seen its share of strife, too. Jensen was arrested in June 2001 on suspicion of driving under the influence, an offense that was pleaded down to a DWAI (driving while ability impaired). In Jefferson County court records, he wrote that his bosses wanted him to travel overseas immediately following the September 11 terrorist attacks, but he couldn't because "of DUI classes, court and DMV hearings and my lack of a driver's license" ("Swing Shift," February 14). Then, after Jensen finally made it to the Middle East, George Kochaniec Jr., a photographer accompanying him, was injured in an Israeli attack on Gaza City.

Such assaults have escalated under the regime of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whom Jensen has taken to task on many occasions. In an April 9 salvo, he referred to critics of Israel who warn that unless George W. Bush can find a way to stop the violence, "the 'Bulldozer' [Sharon] will succeed where Osama bin Laden failed: forcing us into a war of civilizations against 1.2 billion Muslims."

These sentiments didn't land Jensen in hot water, but his April 13 followup, "Obsessed Sharon Applies Brutal Philosophy to Advance Zionism," did. After sketching out what he called the prime minister's "bloody reputation," he cited an interview that Sharon supposedly gave in 1982 to Amos Oz, "one of the leading figures in the Israeli 'Peace Now' movement." The quotes he mentioned include "Better a live Judeo-Nazi than a dead saint."

Such statements would be shocking had Sharon made them, but he didn't. Oz attributed the comments to "Z," a heavyset military man with "a certain history." Because these characteristics roughly fit the man who became prime minister, Jensen wrote in an April 16 "mea culpa" that the interviewee was "widely assumed" to be Sharon. But after the "Brutal Philosophy" column appeared, Oz told Jensen he had never met or interviewed Sharon and identified the actual speaker as an Israeli soldier who died eleven years ago.

The News dealt with this "grievous error," as Jensen put it, in an admirable manner. An item in the April 16 correction box referred readers to Jensen's apology, which was large, detailed, and in roughly the same place where the problem column had appeared -- a rare example of rectification parity. Even more striking was another mention of the gaffe printed on page two of the April 20 News to make sure subscribers to the Post who only get the Saturday Rocky knew the truth.

But the paper took numerous whacks for the bungle anyway, including one from the Wall Street Journal's online opinion page, which chastised Jensen under the headline "Rocky Mountain Lie." And on May 13, Washington Post media expert Howard Kurtz implicitly linked the Sharon botch and the resignation. Jensen, for his part, told Kurtz, "The Rocky Mountain News prints about 400 corrections a year. I have accounted for three in twelve years. I did not resign because of that error."

Maybe not, but he disappeared from the News in close proximity to it. In "Arafat's Old Habits Die Hard," published the day after his apology, Jensen admitted that PLO leader Yasser Arafat may not have entirely shed "his old guerrilla skin." But the column's first sentence -- "Since I examined Ariel Sharon's background in my last column, readers say I should do the same with Yasser Arafat" -- hinted he was writing under duress. After that, the articles stopped, and his previous contributions to the Rocky's Internet destination were deep-sixed.

The next week, Jensen offered brief comments to Westword about his status that only added to the mystery. He said he knew his material was no longer on the News Web site but wouldn't reveal anything about why it was stripped, and he confirmed that his personal Web site, http://homepage.mac.com/hjens, was down as well. (Jensen pulled the plug on the latter, a knowledgeable source says, after receiving complaints about it from higher-ups at the Rocky. By May 10, it was back up.) But he insisted he was merely "taking some time off," and refuted newsroom chatter that he'd been fired with the remark "Don't believe the rumors."

The gossip flow only increased with the May 4 publication of "Staff Gives Paper Sense of Continuity," another in a series of our-people-are-nifty columns by editor Temple. After updating readers on Amole's faltering health and boasting about News victories in a journalism contest, Temple lavished two sentences near the bottom of his article on Jensen, writing, "Holger Jensen has resigned his position as International Editor to pursue other interests. We appreciate his contributions over the past eleven and a half years at the Rocky, and we wish him well in his future endeavors."

The brevity of this sendoff left a vacuum that Jensen did little to fill. In an interview two days later, he again denied that he'd been handed a pink slip: "I quit," he declared. However, he wouldn't talk about what motivated his decision or discuss whether he'd accepted a settlement as a lovely parting gift.

In the meantime, Jensen buffs began to speculate about what really went on, with some guessing that complaints from Israel backers played a key role. Those who advance this argument note that Jensen's walkout makes him the second Denver media figure known for questioning Israeli policy to be effectively silenced last month -- the other being KHOW host Reggie Rivers, who announced his resignation in March and helmed his final broadcast on April 26. Rivers incurred the wrath of pro-Israel factions in 2001 when he unwittingly criticized the country's actions on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year; afterward, he was haunted by callers who excoriated him for everything from naiveté to anti-Semitism ("Many Rivers to Cross," February 7).

KHOW was inundated with complaints from constituencies within the Jewish community about Rivers's program, and numerous businesses yanked their ads, prompting management to suggest he stop dealing with such heavy issues. But in the end, Rivers said he chose to leave not because of the heat, but because he was tired of people screaming at him ("Dead Lines," April 18). Scott Redmond, a former rock DJ who replaced Rivers on April 29, is unlikely to stir such passions: The subjects he's touched upon thus far include favorite one-hit wonders, ugly car designs and whether Jazzercise should be forced to hire a 240-pound instructor (Redmond said no).

Jensen has also been the target of grievances from Jewish community groups in recent months. This experience mirrors protests that have affected operations at several major news operations across the country. In the May 2 San Francisco Chronicle, media writer Dan Fost catalogued a rash of campaigns by outfits who perceived "an anti-Israel bias" at newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, which saw more than 1,000 people cancel their subscriptions to express their displeasure. A similar flap embroiled WBUR, Boston's National Public Radio affiliate, which was dropped by two sponsors because of alleged chilliness toward Israel.

As for Linda Gradstein, NPR's Israel correspondent, she's been accused of partiality from both sides. A pro-Palestinian Web site, www.electronicintifada.org, demanded Gradstein's resignation after discovering that her expenses for a speaking tour were being covered by the Jewish student group Hillel. Chastened, Gradstein turned down the money. But then www.usajewish.com, the self-proclaimed "only daily Jewish tabloid in America," unexpectedly supported harsher consequences. "Here's something we could all agree on," asserted an anonymous author. "We think [Gradstein's] riding a pro-Arab bias the size of a Kassam rocket; the Palestinians can't stand the fact that she's Jewish; so we say to our Palestinian brethren, we are with you in your righteous quest."

To Eric Alterman, a columnist for Nation, the insinuation that the media in general is anti-Israeli is absurd. In an April 2 piece, he assembled a list of 57 nationally known "columnists and commentators who can be counted upon to support Israel reflexively and without qualification," but he could only come up with five "likely to be reflexively anti-Israel and/or pro-Palestinian regardless of circumstance." (Jensen wasn't on the list.) Yet battles over suspected slanting continue to be fought on various fronts. Locally, even the Denver Museum of Nature & Science has been fingered for being too Arab-friendly; Meirav Eilon-Shahar, from the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles, was added to a Middle East lecture series after objections of imbalance from Israel-defending museum members.

Nonetheless, representatives of three organizations that have groused to the News about Jensen contend that they're more interested in proper reporting and clear labeling than in stifling debate.

"We have brought to the Rocky's attention times when we felt Holger's facts were not accurate," says Suzi Stolte, communications director of the Allied Jewish Federation of Colorado. Evan Zuckerman, associate director of the Anti-Defamation League's Mountain States office, divulges that "we've had dialogue with the Rocky and Mr. Temple for years, and our objection consistently has been the accuracy and substance of Mr. Jensen's column, especially when there was blatant bias as a result of misrepresenting the facts." And Susan Heitler, an area therapist involved with Denver-based www.actionisrael.org, feels Jensen "starts with a set belief that Israel is to blame for the problems in the region -- and we think that for American papers to preach an anti-Israel propaganda line that distorts the actual facts is quite inappropriate."

Heitler says after she shared such gripes in correspondence with Temple, the News started running most of Jensen's writing under the heading "Perspective," which she feels was "a good choice of words, because he wasn't reporting objective facts." But Temple doesn't want anyone to think the change was made at Actionisrael's behest. He partly credits complaints from Greg Dobbs, the News's biweekly media columnist, with spurring the move.

"Greg did have an influence," Temple says. "If Greg, a sophisticated journalist, felt there was confusion, and if a lot of other people seemed to be having a hard time understanding that he was writing perspective, we thought we needed to label it."

The News hasn't exactly been barraged with remonstrations about Jensen since he left. Last week, Dave Kopel, research director of the Independence Institute, who shares the the News's media-critic beat, said he and Dobbs had been sent copies of approximately eighteen e-mails addressed to Temple from various spots in the U.S. and Canada, with most charging that the Rocky had forced Jensen out for ideological reasons.

Still, Jensen has plenty of supporters with national platforms, and at least two of them surmise that politics is at the root of his troubles. Ned Hanauer, of the Massachusetts group Search for Justice and Equality in Palestine/ Israel (www.searchforjustice.org), says, "I think his leaving the Rocky Mountain News is a serious loss to the people of Colorado, particularly given the often one-sided media coverage and anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim bias in much of the American media."

Adds Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy (www.accuracy.org), "It's almost unheard of for an American journalist to lose his or her job after coming under attack for being overly pro-Israel. But it's fairly common for journalists to run into professional difficulties after coming under attack for being pro-Palestinian."

If this description fits him, though, Jensen's not saying. About the most he'll disclose is that he'd like to remain in Colorado but is "entertaining all offers." Considering what's happening in the Middle East, and here at home, it will be interesting to see how many he receives.
 

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml . If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.