One of the authors of the despicable story against slain Menachem Stark received two awards for her excellence in Jewish journalism, based on two anti-Hasidic stories she wrote for The Jewish Week, an inquiry by YWN found.
Hella Winston, one of the reporters assigned by the NY Post for Sunday’s front cover story, is best known for her writings for The Jewish Week on haredi child abuse and against the Borough Park Shomrim.
Winston’s name was meanwhile removed for the NY Post’s story bi-line and replaced with “Hella Winson” as additional reporting.
h/t @YossiGestetner/Twitter
According to the Jewish Week, Hella Winston, who has been reporting about the problem of child abuse in the fervently Orthodox community for The Jewish Week for four years, received an Honorable Mention in the 2012 Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism.
Ms. Winston received two awards for excellence in Jewish journalism from the American Jewish Press Association’s in 2012. In the Excellence in News Reporting Category, Hella Winston took first place for “In Lakewood Abuse Cases, A Parallel System Of Justice” and second for “Tragedy in Borough Park Puts Shomrim Under Scrutiny.”
She is also the author of the book “Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels” published in 2006, writing about Brooklyn’s Hasidim unhappy with their “highly restrictive way of life and sometimes desperately struggling to escape it.”
Read the review of her book here
The revaluations above are enough to determine the notice behind the deployment of adding her name to the hit piece against a community in grievance, burying one of its finest, killed in a heinous act of murder.
Ms. Winston is also the author of an article in The Jewish Week hitting Assemblyman Dov Hikind, in 2008, for not disclosing information of abuse that were obtained by the Brooklyn Assemblyman. Which explains why Mr. Hikind would not seek a direct confrontation with the Post, not showing up at the press conference Sunday afternoon arranged by Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, and attended by all local elected officials, including 100s of community leaders and operatives.
The nature of Winston’s reporting also leads to the fact that the Post decided to report about the Brooklyn press conference condemning the NY Post and calling for its boycott. In the report, the only politician that is quoted, is Borough Park council member David Greenfield. The fact that there were 15 speakers at the rally, 3 of them in most senior positions, didn’t hold them back of portraying the event as an insulated event by The Hasidic community, led by the representative of the largest gathering of Orthodox Jews in the city of New York.
Now, go wonder why the NY Post chose the Sunday front cover to defame the name of an innocent victim, his family and entire community.
UPDATE 12:55am:
In an email correspondence with YWN, Hella Winston said she didn’t write a word of the Post story. She claims to have only contributed “additional reporting,” which amounted to literally one piece of information.
(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)
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25 Responses
this is the new filthy helen thomas incarnation. Watch your nose grow like helen made fun of the jewish nose and had one herself!
HOWEVER, generally the editors are the ones to make the headline, NOT the reporter.
Now we have a name. I hope someone does a write up about her and slanderous lies. I also hope the family sues the Hella Winston out of money.
You should have left the last sentence out because it negates your whole article.
Ideally, someone could organize a widespread boycott of the Post. Not only by not buying the paper or visiting their website (which no one should do anyway) but much more significant, cutting away at their advertisers = their real income.
Step 1 – acquire a NY Post. Only one. Preferably find a used one free.
Step 2 – send letters to every major advertiser that we intend to not only boycott the paper, but any advertisers that continue to give them business.
If even 20% of them cancel or fail to renew, it will hurt the paper bad.
This winston is a secular jew who is bent on defaming orthodox jews. We should organize protests at the ny post for being racists. We should boycott the post in all jewish communities from boro park to far rockaway. Imagine if they had a writer who wrote against blacks. We chareidim need to begin fighting our enemies and sue all the anti jewish blogs. We are fed up with these racist rebels from winston to avi weiss.
I don’t think the headline was appropriate, however, it is also not appropriate for you to say, “to defame the name of an innocent victim, his family and entire community.”, as he was not “innocent” – he did not deserve to be killed, but he was not “innocent”; and no one “defamed the entire community” – they spoke of HIM, NOT the entire community. Those who maintain the attitude that people are innocent, solely on the basis of their being Jewish, is out of touch with reality.
ysguy: I believe anyone reading your little comment derives that you must be a selfish lowlife & self hating jew. No excuses for what happened.
anti Orthodox because she exposed the ,molestation cover ups please get a live.
that is not anti. I guess YNW is anti everybody else since you have no problem posting stories that are negative as long as it is a yid.
Once again, Mr. Kornbluh uses extremely poor judgement in his writing, during a time of communal tragedy. His comments and speculation about Dov Hikind are both inappropriate and without fact. There is no connection between Mr. Hikind and this story except in Mr. Kornbluh’s Post like “journalism”.
This lady looks like or worse than Hellen Thomas or whatever her name was. I aint gona waste a sec researching that trash.
Self hating jews!
ysguy wrote
“Those who maintain the attitude that people are innocent, solely on the basis of their being Jewish, is out of touch with reality”
Sorry, buddy but it is the law of the USA that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Besides, how does his business dealings justify an article condoning his murder??
“Which explains why Mr. Hikind would not seek a direct confrontation with the Post, not showing up at the press conference Sunday afternoon arranged by Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, and attended by all local elected officials, including 100s of community leaders and operatives.” – – – Dov Hikind is on vacation in Florida
Having spoken to Hella several times, i feel the need to chime in here. She is absolutely not a self hating jew nor is she anti orthodox. She is anti corruption and anti the abuse of innocent victims. There is a HUGE difference. Besides, she was not the major contributing factor to this news story. In addition, I personally can attest to the fact that she DOES her homework before she writes ANYTHING. She is way too much of a traditional journalist and has way too much tact to write things on a whim without proper research.
Step Aside—Every action has an equall and opposite reaction,when someone looses money he is as the saying goes uni chushev kemes so you see people can kill for money and this is what happened to stark get that through youre thick skull.murder is many times an outcome of the behaviour he exhibited especially when you deal with goyim he should of known that,aizehu chuhum haroe es hanoled.
Forget the stupidity of the content that highlighting abuse makes you an anti-semite), and that any idiot knows that “additional reporting” can mean information taken from previously published sources, this article reads like it was written by a child. Really? YWN can’t get any “journalists” who know how to write coherent, grammatical English?
@ysguy
why isnt he innocent? because the post decided to portray him as not innocent?
is the guy a convicted felon? did the guy spend a week in jail???
what makes him “not innocent” the way you said it?
so sad that even frum yidden are getting influenced by this despicable article!!!!!!!!!
Reminder, even, if in worst case scenario he was the greediest man on planet earth- i repeat that im not calling him greedy for one second, but even if as the post claims he was a greedy man, WHERE IN THE CONSTITUTION IS BEING GREEDY A CRIME? AND EVEN MORE SO A CRIME PUNISHABLE BY DEATH????????????
numen21: hella lost any claim to journalistic integrity when her coverage of the young Kletzky’s a”h horrific murder focused solely on her attack against shomrim. While the entire Jewish community was deep in the throws of that tragedy she could only focus on defaming the people who tried to help. I have not forgotten that horrible front page story in the Jewish Week nor have i forgiven her for it. She has excluded herself from the camp of caring Jewish people so please dont insult those of us “insiders” by saying she is not a self-hating Jew nor is she anti-orthodox. Her actions and articles speak for themselves.
and furthermore numen21, I have yet to see any article in the Jewish Week or elsewhere where hella wrote in praise of the orthodox community. Until she is capable of producing such a piece she will be defined as anti-orthodox simply because that’s what she is! If you’re in touch with her as you claim to be, feel free to share these sentiments with her
if she is taka a self hating jew.she should get her rightful punishment.
I think that the headline was terrible, but Hella Winston did not write it, nor did she write the story.
How does it indicates bias for the NYP to consult with someone knowledgeable about certain some aspects of the story they are reporting on?
Although the headline and story were despicable and in bad taste, is any of the INFORMATION contained there not true?
Why attack the messenger when you can show that the story itself was inaccurate — unless you can’t?
numen21 is saying good, and will only say good or nothing at all. He is the rosh. Hela wouldnt ever write such a headline.
While NYP should have never write what they did, and it was a really bad taste for a headline (I have few non Jewish coworkers who were shocked at it as well) I don’t know why people here are surprised that the Media and people are not in love with Hasidim especially satmar. I remember when Williamsburg couple was killed few months ago in terrible car accident, I read some comments from people on CBS article about it, and 80% or more were not feeling bad but bashing Hasidim and that they steal money from government, not honest business people etc. I was shocked when you have a young couple (who unlike Mr. Stark did not even have anything negative about them) were still treated by people in not nice way. But then aren’t those Satmar who time to time (and last time was just a week ago) hold a public demonstration against Israel and hope Goyim will side with them. Aren’t they who show other Jews to goyim in negative light, so what do you expect in return. And it does not matter what is the reason for that. No matter how much Hasidim want to make Israel bad in eyes of not Jews, they will be also hated. And also, people call those who disagree with them as self hating Jews (probably some may call me as well) bit aren’t the Satmar also self heating Jews who say bad things about Jews in Israel, and even other Satmar Jews from another sect. If you want other people to love you, learn Ahavas Isroel yourself, otherwise don’t be surprised
You guys don’t get it. Though the headline was despicable, this was a great opportunity for YWN to bash Dov Hikind, The Jewish Week and Hella Winston. Stand by for more to come…
Dear World,
I do not want to insert myself into all of this ridiculous banter back and forth about Hella Winston. She may not be the kind of Jew you claim to be nor may you agree with everything she says or does. I do however happen to know that the Jewish world owes a great deal of gratitude to Hella for all of the work she has done regarding sexual abuse and her role in bringing it to light. I have been involved with advocacy for many years now and have watched the topic transition from being hidden and underground to a mainstream topic that it is now permeated into every corner of Frum communities worldwide.
I regularly have people come up to me privately sharing their gratitude for my efforts in exposing Sexual Abuse in the Frum community. My response is always the same. It was not just me alone. It took a whole group of us to slowly break the message through.
Let me tell you something folks, without a doubt very little of this progress would have happened without the tireless work Hella has done both behind the scenes and publicly. I know about all of this firsthand, so let me tell any of you who feel the need to trash Hella or her reputation, you are making a mistake in thinking she is the enemy. The entire Frum Jewish community owes her an enormous debt of gratitude for what she has done for us.
She is a good person who has helped Klal Yisroel immeasurably and I for one am willing to stake my own reputation as a survivor and advocate and tell the world to please back off Hella Winston. She is not the problem she is very much part of the solution.
Mark Weiss