National Public Radio’s uncritical depiction of the Israeli Jewish mobs harassing Jewish women who date Palestinian men provoked debate here, and at NPR’s website.
Ombudsman Alicia Shepard has now found some fault with Sheera Frenkel’s tale of the vigilantes. Actually, though, Frenkel’s report just follows NPR’s pattern. In our times, U.S. “news” outlets have warped public policy in the name of “objectivity,” distorting a 95-5 percent consensus among, say, climatologists about global warming, into a false balance of 50-50.
And with Palestine, “journalists” have made a doubly misleading exception. Rather than adhering to the rule of “’He said,’ – ‘He said,’” journalists mouth what “Israel said” 100 percent of the time. Taking dictation from a foreign country, the “U.S.” typists with microphones holler warnings of Islamic extremism, never whispering about the radical expansionism of Netanyahu’s far-rightist coalition, the illegality of both Israel’s decades-old Occupation and new Apartheid Wall, or that fact that its siege of Gaza violated any decent standard at all. Nor do they mumble that Israel launched the 1967 war in response to the blockade of only one port in the Straits of Tiran.
Not content with stenography, “our” press “corps” salutes like recruits to orders, chanting about an illusory Iranian threat. When will the formation break ranks by comparing Iran’s record of not attacking others with Israel’s frequent assaults on its neighbors, or Iran’s lack of nuclear weapons with Israel’s “undisclosed” 200? When will the squad mutiny against its generals by investigating Israel’s bombardment of the USS Liberty, or espionage into U.S. secrets? When will the buglers sound a "Reveille" awakening us to the revelation that the U.S. pays $3 billion a year, plus $10 billion over ten years, plus millions in loan guarantees and tax-deductible contributions for the illegal Occupation of Palestine?
A press that confines facts to Israeli propaganda imprisons most Americans in ignorance as to how our money buys cages for the Palestinian people. NPR has trained most listeners to accept the drill, so arousing audience outrage required Frenkel to shrink her dispatch to the most narrow—yet explosive–xenophobia.
Frenkel defends her exclusions to Shepherd: "I think the listeners were best served by being shown a night on one of the patrols….And I was careful not to cast judgment on this practice so that the listener could reach their own conclusions."
But Frenkel is actually “careful not to cast” Israeli government actions in a clear light. Frenkel purges all facts about the Israeli Occupation–as ruthlessly as the Israeli government evicts the rightful Palestinian “owners” from their homes. Frenkel adopts the language of the Occupiers: she demeans the Palestinian and Jewish pairs as “couplings”; she feigns surprise over their eruption as “an unforeseen bi-product” of the Israeli occupation—an onslaught she whitewashes as “the growing number of Jewish settlements that have been built across largely Arab East Jerusalem.”
Alicia Shepard tells us that NPR foreign editor Loren Jenkins regrets Frenkel’s lopsided presentation: "In retrospect," said Jenkins, "we probably should have insisted Sheera talk to an Arab boy.” But Jenkins immediately recants, disparaging the probable result: “the response would have been a predictable condemnation as both Arabs and Israelis view such vigilante actions by a few as reprehensible."
Why bother letting Palestinians speak for themselves, when NPR can “predict” their opinions? Frenkel and Jenkins expose the formula that substitutes for research at NPR: One night, One group, plus One opposing “spokes-mouth,” for balance.
[read the full article…]{ Comments on this entry are closed }
