My personal thoughts are that the frum Jewish news sites are merely blogs full of copied and pasted material, I always figured a news site would have reporters and cover their own stories. It seems that the only one that does that sort of thing is JTA. Of course you have Yeshiva World News, but Vos Iz Neias publishes more scandalous content and doesn’t force commenters to login so they have taken those readers away. Enter Matzav.com, the newest news blog that has a mix of reporting, copying and pasting and rewording of major news site articles, I will give them credit for giving me more things to make fun of.
Matzav is what I would term as a holier than thou website, that thinks they are the shit, especially when they say they are the online voice of Torah Jewry. Comments like the following really irk me.
“It is about time we start cracking down on those who feel that the internet is open for all analysis and criticism of gedolim, rabbonim and yeshivos.It is nothing less than a chillul Hashem.” TakenFrom here.
Isn’t that the whole point of the internet and the way we are going? Blogs have worked wonders providing more transparency within orthodox Judaism and if anything the gedolim and daas torah supporters can have a venue to bring the discussion to a wider range of people then ever thought possible. Open criticism is what blogging and social media is all about.
The following was posted on Matzav and it seems like they are either in a heated competition with Vos Iz Neias or they are owned by the same people and trying to corner the market, anything is possible. I do like the fact that reliable sources are mentioned but they don’t tell you who these reliable sources are.
The Vos Iz Neias blog this morning posted a report from an unnamed “government official” claiming that Matzav.com’s report about Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin being threatened by one inmate at the Linn County Correctional Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is false. As a matter of fact, Matzav.com broke the story last night after verifying it with the most reliable of sources. The report is 100% accurate and true, and any claims to the contrary are erroneous, irresponsible, and plainly fabricated.
We are unsure at this point where the aforementioned blog gathered their unfounded claim. The blog’s report quotes a single official, yet their headline states that “officials,” implying more than one, had substantiated the claim. Either way, it should be noted that the veracity of the Matzav report, unfortunately, is not in question whatsoever.
It should be added that such fallacious claims can only do harm to the effort to assist Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin. In this case, the goal of Yidden should be to properly present the gravity of the situation and not deny the truth based on specious sources or water down what is happening.
{Elisha Ferber, Editor, Matzav.com}
P.S. Go to google images and put in matzav, it’s kind of funny