Published photo with antisemitic imagery lacked the proper context

A Toronto Star staffer reached out to me in my role as public editor recently, upset by the way a photograph in our newspaper was presented.

The image showed the Star of David, flanked on each side by a dollar sign, with the name Soros underneath. It was for a May 21 feature story about billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros.

The antisemitic image ran atop the front of our Sunday Insight section and inside on page 6 with the article. On the cover was a small two-word teaser headline that read, “Under fire.” Below that was a brief throw to the story that read “Do Soros’s powerful enemies prove his approach is working?”

The 1,645-word feature inside touched on a number of points, one of the main being that Soros has drawn ire and become the target of conservatives in the U.S. and authoritarians elsewhere because they see him as a global threat.

Soros, a hedge fund wizard and a liberal, has used some of his massive fortune in a bid to influence political and societal dynamics around the world, including supporting dissidents in foreign countries, as well as Democrats and progressive activists in the U.S., the story explained.

The well-written article also reported that the Hungarian-born Jew and Holocaust survivor has become a target of the right, particularly in the U.S. — a poster boy for what many American conservatives believe are society’s ills.

Former U.S. president Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have criticized the district attorney in New York leading a criminal investigation into Trump as being Soros-backed — Soros donated to a political action committee (PAC) that supported the district attorney Alvin Bragg’s candidacy when Bragg ran for the position.

Soros has even been blamed, ridiculously and falsely, for being somehow responsible for the spread of COVID-19.

Criticism levelled against Soros has veered into age-old antisemitic tropes about Jews controlling the world, the article pointed out. Which brings me back to the image of the Star of David with the dollar signs and the concerns raised to me by the Star staffer.

The cutline for the photo in the Star said: “New York Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman has an aide display an image of a protester carrying a sign referencing Soros at a House of Representatives judiciary committee field hearing last month.”

Referencing Soros?

The Star employee I spoke to said the cutline details and the throw on the section cover “stung” because important background details were missing — specifically an explanation that the photo depicts an antisemitic message.

“I think we all know that the image references a lot more than (Soros),” the staffer said in a note to me.

In a followup email the staffer said: “An image of the Magen David (Jewish Star) sandwiched between two dollar signs is not a neutral image, least of all when it is presented in reference to a person of great wealth and influence who happens to be Jewish.”

The staffer later said the image referenced conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the world’s wealth, theories that preceded Nazi Germany and still thrive today.

“This image requires context and none was given here. Instead, a neutral caption was given, implying the image itself was neutral,” the Star employee said — a solid point, to my mind as public editor.

This mistake occurred with “no ill intentions” by Star editors, the complainant went on to say, adding it was “nonetheless careless. Greater care must be taken with images like this.”

The larger photo, which also ran for the online version of the article, was not mentioned in any way in the story, which exacerbated the problem, I would add.

So, here’s some context. The Associated Press file photo was shot in late April.

According to a HuffPost report, after a House judiciary committee meeting in Manhattan that month, Goldman, the New York congressman, blamed Republicans for “blatant antisemitism” for repeatedly invoking Soros’s name when attacking the district attorney probing Trump. The timing of the Republican attacks is germane given the explosion in antisemitic violence now, Goldman pointed out.

Goldman, who is a Jewish member of Congress, said the Republicans were suggesting the New York district attorney and other left-of-centre prosecutors were being led by Soros’s direction, again feeding into the Jewish conspiracy trope, the HuffPost article said.

On a videotape of the committee hearing, Goldman explains that when he walked to the hearing he saw a demonstrator outside holding the sign with the hateful image. Goldman had an aide hold up the photograph in the hearing room.

According to the HuffPost, Goldman asked a Republican witness at the hearing whether the sign was antisemitic. The witness, who is a critic of the district attorney Bragg and has a son who was the victim of antisemitic violence, said the sign was “100 per cent antisemitic and it’s disgusting,” the HuffPost reported.

Notably, the Associated Press cutline for the photo explained that Goldman was using the image to “cite antisemitism as a feature of political attacks that reference the billionaire” Soros. Unfortunately, this context wasn’t picked up when Star editors and production team members used the image for our Soros feature, a clear error.

Star editor-in-chief Anne Marie Owens said the individuals who made the mistake did not do so intentionally, but Owens added that the misstep could have been avoided with more “recognition and awareness.”

“Without the appropriate context, the image can inevitably be viewed as antisemitic in itself. Someone who understands all those layers intuitively can do the work of filling in the subtleties of context, but they shouldn’t have to do that heavy lift on their own,” Owens said.

Her words made me think of a young reader or someone who might not be overly familiar with the Soros story and the antisemitism underlying a lot of the attacks against him.

“This was a mistake made without ill will, but which did harm. Everyone involved understands and regrets that and we have taken steps to ensure this won’t happen again,” Owens said.

In my role as public editor I receive feedback and concerns from readers from various communities in our city and elsewhere — communities visible and otherwise — when there’s an issue with a photo, headline, cutline or story we publish. We take this seriously.

It’s not about being politically correct or “woke” but rather ensuring we’re fair and accurate in what we present and that it stands up to scrutiny.

Facts matter. Context matters.

Donovan Vincent is the Star's Public Editor and based in Toronto. Reach him by email at publiced@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @donovanvincent