THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE 43 news program) carried the report, most o f them scarcely even m entioned it, and not one has mentioned the various Am nesty, Red Cross, and other such reports that followed. O f this scandalous informational dereliction, Nicholas V on Hoffman aptly noted: A t the minimum, the Israeli authorities should study the case assembled against them [by the Sunday Times report on torture by Israeli authorities] and come up with something more convincing than the statement released by their embassy in London which simply said: “ Allegations of this nature have been repeatedly put out by Arab propaganda sources in recent years and proved to be totally unfounded in the light of detailed and documented investigations.” Name-calling and reliance on investigations conducted by Israel for its own exoneration will not do. . . . The grotesque irony of using gas as an instrument of torture ought to have been too much even for those Israeli officials who believe treating human beings this way advances the cause of democracy. Most Americans will never know any of this. As of [now] . . . only one newspaper (the Boston Globe) has seen fit to run the report. The indifference isn’t owing to doubt about the caliber of the journalism. The Sunday Times “ Insight” Team which did the story is universally respected in the business. The lack of interest on this occasion may be explained by the New York Times covering the torture investigation with an 86-word article, appearing on page 13. To some extent all news in America is what the New York Times calls news, but even more so with foreign news. . . . So few print or broad­ cast editors are able to make independent judgments on the news. They simply lack the character and stature to have an opinion of their own and prefer the safety of letting the nation’s most prestigious paper do their decision-making for them. This is particularly easy with an issue like Israel where any adverse publicity is likely to win an editor vociferous abuse from the nation’s best-organized lobby. It doesn’t work that way abroad, however, where the mass media are giving the publics in the other democracies far less biased accounts.”