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[Excerpt:]

While praising the honest dialogue and appraisals on both sides of the debate at the conference itself, NGO Monitor president Gerald Steinberg said the trend is so problematic that NGOs should have an ethical code of conduct, as the media do. The code of conduct should include an enforcement mechanism or ombudsman that would combine independent observers with volunteers from the NGOs themselves to hold them to a greater standard of objectivity, Steinberg said. Why is this necessary? According to Steinberg, most NGOs that cover Israel have been “taken over by an ideological agenda.” Despite this, he said the media do not check the veracity of and often overly dramatize the findings of NGOs regarding human rights law.