A really ugly specimen of journalism took place several days ago in the Los Angeles Times. In the text of an op-ed by esteemed Harvard historian Niall Ferguson appears a pull quote bashing Israel, unrelated to the op-ed itself.

Having lost the actual arguments, Israel's defenders have now declared war on argument itself.

Normally, a pull quote is supposed to highlight some of the text in the piece. However, there is nothing in the piece about Israel.  You can pull up the hyperlink, or look at the screen grab below.

The friend who spotted this random act of Israel-bashing and sent it to me comments, “The editors of the LA Times seem to just have anti-Israel quotes on their computers’ memory keys and hit one of those keys.” See for yourself:

I wonder how Professor Ferguson feels about this?