Matti Friedman

Matti Friedman (Hebrew: מתי פרידמן‎‎) is an Israeli Canadian journalist and author.

Biography

Matti Friedman grew up in Toronto. In 1995, he immigrated to Israel and settled in Jerusalem.[1][2]

Media career

Between 2006 and the end of 2011, Friedman was a reporter and editor in the Jerusalem bureau of the Associated Press (AP) news agency.[3] During his journalistic career, he also worked as a reporter in Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Moscow and Washington, D.C.[1]

Friedman's book, The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible, published in May 2012 by Algonquin Books, is an account of how the Aleppo Codex, "the oldest, most complete, most accurate text of the Hebrew Bible," came to reside in Israel. It was believed the codex had been destroyed during the 1947 Anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo when the Central Synagogue of Aleppo, where the codex was housed, was set on fire and badly damaged. Friedman also investigates how and why many of the codex's pages went missing and what their fate might be.[4]

The book won the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature,[5] was selected as one of Booklist's top ten religion and spirituality books of 2012,[6] was awarded the American Library Association's 2013 Sophie Brody Medal[7] and the 2013 Canadian Jewish Book Award for history,[8] and received second place for the Religion Newswriters Association's 2013 nonfiction religion book of the year.[9]

Friedman is also the author of Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story of a Forgotten War, about his experiences as an IDF soldier during the South Lebanon conflict, published in 2016.[10]

Views and opinions

Following the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, Friedman wrote an essay criticizing what he views as the international media's bias against Israel and undue focus on the country, stating that news organizations treat it as "most important story on earth". He said when he was a correspondent at AP, "the agency had more than 40 staffers covering Israel and the Palestinian territories. That was significantly more news staff than the AP had in China, Russia, or India, or in all of the 50 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. It was higher than the total number of news-gathering employees in all the countries where the uprisings of the 'Arab Spring” eventually erupted... I don’t mean to pick on the AP—the agency is wholly average, which makes it useful as an example. The big players in the news business practice groupthink, and these staffing arrangements were reflected across the herd."[3] Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the piece went "viral" on Facebook.[1] The Atlantic then invited Friedman to write a longer article.[11] AP issued a statement, saying that Friedman's "... arguments have been filled with distortions, half-truths and inaccuracies, both about the recent Gaza war and more distant events. His suggestion of AP bias against Israel is false".[12]

Published works

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Why journalists say Israeli-Arab reporting is 'rigged'". Haaretz. 14 September 2014.
  2. ↑ "Homepage". Matti Friedman official website.
  3. 1 2 Friedman, Matti (26 August 2014). "An Insider's Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth". Tablet.
  4. ↑ Bergman, Ronen (25 July 2012). "A High Holy Whodunit". The New York Times.
  5. ↑ "Friedman accepts 'Aleppo Codex' prize". The Times of Israel. 22 January 2014.
  6. ↑ "Top 10 Religion & Spirituality Books". Booklist. 15 November 2012.
  7. ↑ "'The Aleppo Codex' wins RUSA's Sophie Brody Medal for achievement in Jewish literature". American Library Association. 27 January 2013.
  8. ↑ "'Aleppo Codex' wins Canadian book award". The Times of Israel. 2 May 2013.
  9. ↑ "2013 RNA Contest Winners". Religion Newswriters Association.
  10. ↑ Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story of a Forgotten War
  11. ↑ Friedman, Matti (30 November 2014). "What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel". The Atlantic. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
  12. ↑ "AP statement on Mideast coverage". Associated Press. 1 December 2014.

External links

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