Yated Ne'eman is not just another newspaper run by
Torah observant people. Such newspapers adopt the general
journalistic model of a primarily profit-driven organization
that provides information services, albeit with the welcome
restrictions of providing only material that is within the
bounds of halochoh and of decency. These organizations' main
aim is to provide monetary profits for their owners, and they
do it by providing information of various kinds to the Torah
observant community.
It is true that Yated does want to earn a profit (or
at least break even). But this is a secondary motive, which
must be adopted in order to achieve the primary motive.
Yated has as its primary mission the spreading of
daas Torah.
This can be understood by an analogy to the prepared food
business. A restaurant is in the business of supplying
prepared food to hungry customers. If it is a kosher
restaurant it will hire rabbonim to supervise its operation
to make sure that everything is kosher. If the owners are
chareidi themselves, they will ask questions — as they
see the need — to make sure that what they do is
proper.
But it will remain a business, and it will remain the
property of the owners. If they decide that something is
kosher and it is without-question all right to use it in
their cooking, it is up to the rabbonim to catch them if they
can. The owners can always go ahead and do as they see fit,
and they are trying to maximize their personal pecuniary
profit.
Yated is more like a soup kitchen — for good and
for bad. Of course it has to balance its books, of course the
food should be tasteful and the facilities attractive —
but first and foremost the owners of a soup kitchen are
trying to achieve the spiritual end of chessed. They
will not want to do anything to jeopardize that goal. There
is no conflict to them if they have to spend more to be sure
their food is kosher, since it is all part of the same goal
which is a spiritual one.
Yated was set up by gedolei Yisroel — the
Steipler and HaRav Shach — with the primary goal of
spreading daas Torah, though the means is to be a
"real newspaper and not a hashkofoh sheet," as the
Steipler put it. It has to report real news and be part of
the market. But Yated's primary, overall goal is
spiritual, and this is inherent in the organization
itself.
This goal has a negative aspect and a positive aspect.
The negative aspect is really what applies to most of what we
do not write. We are a newspaper, and we publish news. But we
do not publish all the news, but only that which does not
violate Torah guidelines.
In the modern world, whose moral level is on a steady
decline, many items make it into the newspapers that in
previous generations were not thought "fit to print" by
respectable publishers. Lurid crimes are reported, and
sometimes, during "newsworthy" trials for example, the
details of the crimes can fill acres of newsprint for many
weeks. This is presented as the press doing its duty to
inform the public, but in truth they are just printing
material that appeals to the lower instincts of their
readers. The details of these crimes are of no importance to
the general public. Exposing people to their details drags
their minds down into the gutter. Unfortunately, appealing to
people's lower instincts is an almost certain formula for
financial success in the modern world, so the general press
makes its appeals lower and lower.
Positively, we were told to try to make every part of the
paper, as much as possible, into something to be learned from
and/or something uplifting. We try to make things count, to
publish material that will be enlightening, helpful and
spiritually uplifting.
Unfortunately, given the state of the world, not everything
that the rabbonim want to inform people about is positive.
Given the abundance of things in the world today that must be
avoided, it should be expected that there are some things
that rabbonim want to warn people against, and sometimes the
warnings are not pleasant.
Yated's main mission is to present daas Torah. In
this, we are the mouthpiece of the rabbonim. Our Vaada
Ruchanit is not an advisory board, but really a board of
directors. They direct what we put in and what we do not, and
the entire organization is built to ensure this. Yated
remains the only newspaper in which rabbonim can be sure of
getting their statements published, no matter what they
say.
These thoughts were prompted by the recent 16th anniversary
of the appearance of the English Yated, and the stream
of correspondence that we get whenever we put in something
controversial.
Let us hope that we will be successful in spreading daas
Torah — so successful that the entire world will be
filled with it and have no need for Yated.
