Joel emails me: LukeFord,
In recents weeks I have been following a line of posts that you have on your website regarding a disgruntled employee of Montefiore hospital, Mr. Robert Frank. It appears to me that till now no evidence has been put forth by you or Mr. frank regarding these allegations. Today The Jewish Week has posted an article regarding this matter after conducting an investigation and interveiwing all those involved with this situation. As I certainly understand your desire to uncover some of the not so pleasant instances in our community, I also feel that proper journalism calls for you to objectively look at both sides of the story. Now after reading this article, your dislike for the OU may cause you to disregard this article entirely however I do believe that you may agree with me that “The Jewish Week” is a credible news source. Please read the article an take ALL the facts into consideration and perhaps display to your readers the truth behind this story. Don’t let Robert Frank use your website for his personal gain. clearly Robert frank is an unstable person seeking retribution from the hospital. He has made it clear on several occasions throughout the numerous articles that he has posted that if the hospital would simply give him his job back than he would be happy. Frank is not a man trying to do justice to the world, nor is he a man with moral objectives to his job, he simply wants to manipulate the system to his advantage.
A kashrut supervisor who was fired from his post at a Montefiore Medical Center kitchen says he paid the price for exposing what he claims were kosher violations at the Bronx hospital.
But an executive of the Orthodox Union, which placed him there, insists any infractions were routine and that the mashgiach, Robert Frank, tried to use them as bargaining chips to deal with disciplinary measures taken against him by the hospital.
The tangled tale of allegations and counter allegations raises the specter of conflicts of interest that could arise when supervisors rely on those they supervise for their livelihood.
Much of the story of this story is the blog that broke the story and how this little blog pushed The Jewish Week to publish a story they did not want to touch.
My evidence for this assertion? How many similar whistleblowing stories has The Jewish Week published in the past? Very few, if any. The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles and The Jewish Week of New York and other members of the establishment Jewish press are continually pushed by blogs to report on scandals that they would otherwise prefer to ignore to maintain their cozy relationship with advertisers and sources.
I wonder how smart was it for the Orthodox Union and the hospital to hold off responding to this story for six weeks? I emailed both parties Nov. 26, 2009. They chose not to respond.
I guess it was so important to them to get their chosen newspaper to tell their story that they were willing to suffer in silence the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
I say to the Orthodox Union and Montefiore Hospital, how did that work out for you? It’s no skin off my nose if you choose not to answer my emails. It just makes you look bad when only one side of the story is told on my blog.
The Jewish Journal’s Amy Klein wrote in the New York Times Sept. 5, 2008: “He was always hounding our newspaper to cover scandals in the Jewish community. As a blogger he had
