Yesterday morning I was listening to On the Media, the NPR program about how the media works, when host Bob Garfield railed at a listener of the program for accusing the program of bias in favor of Israel.
Garfield’s speech takes place at minute 27 of the link. He reads from a letter in which a listener states that On the Media co-host “Brooke Gladstone’s report on the Palestinian issue is so biased that my radio bleeds,” and accuses Gladstone of reading “from the AIPAC playbook.”
Garfield mocked the listener by pointing out that Gladstone didn’t appear on the broadcast that triggered his letter. And if your radio is bleeding, Garfield continued, it’s “a safety hazard,” and you should turn it off and use the “receiver planted in your dental fillings by the FBI.” More:
I will not allow you to accuse Brooke of corruption. So you have lost your comment privilege. You are banned forever. Scram.
I found the lecture inappropriate and so did commenter Mario500 from Mobile, Alabama:
Bob Garfield’s response to one of the messages was unnecessarily harsh. He should have responded to the person with a private message rather than a public response that may have cost him and the program many listeners.
The lecture was not just highhanded but irresponsible. In yesterday’s show, Garfield did a piece on the Democratic convention noting that the only real news was the party bosses adding Jerusalem to the party platform, despite opposition from the rank and file, but commented that the plank was “toothless political posturing,” because Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is “a negotiating point in the peace process and will never be pushed by any elected president.” I have no idea what this means. But AIPAC helped script the Jerusalem language. Shouldn’t Garfield have mentioned that?
Is the lobby’s push for war with Iran toothless? Gladstone knows a lot about Zionism in Jewish life, and about the Israel lobby too. I never hear her treating these issues on her show. Goldstone’s husband, who works for Slate, supported the disastrous Iraq war (to his credit, he cops to his error); but I don’t believe that On the Media has ever examined the assertion (supported by Joe Klein, Lawrence Wilkerson, Philip Zelikow, and Walt and Mearsheimer among others) that the Israel lobby played a crucial part in the decision to invade Iraq. You’d think these would be elements of a serious reflective process in the media. But then, you probably have a radio receiver in your fillings.
No surprise here. NPR like most liberal media in the US has always been a hard line supporter of Israel. “Progressives” do not support human rights for politically incorrect people like the Palestinians. They still adhere to the old left wing orthodoxy of the late 1940s that the Palestinian Arabs are reactionaries and deserve whatever they get.
Good I am glad to hear the message getting out further and further into the hinterland.
Why wasn’t the listener accused of anti shemitism.
The hoi polloi will learn of a jewish lobby, they will think in those terms, they will not be able to differentiate between all jews and Aipac/zionists.
It’s interesting that all the talking heads on cable TV news entertainment shows have been downplaying the oral vote plank change in the Demos platform–caught in all its hi-handedness and pants-down ardor live on video available to anyone. The dismissals run from saying that’s just standard political party activity to a platform plank means nothing at all in the first place. Nobody on this mainstream media has addressed just how much of a public farce what happened makes of US representational and pure democracy in real action in the actual world we live in.
Although not directly related, I can’t help but think of what Pelosi said about Obamacare; that is, we have to pass the bill before we can know what’s in it. Didn’t we do that with Bush Jr’s attack on Iraq too? And now, Iran’s “red line?”
Brooke Gladstone always reads from the Aipac playbook. The program is absurd in many ways. They never turn that wagging finger back on themselves in regard to what they will and will not cover.
Listening to Sunday’s Up with Chris Hayes. He had a panel on to discuss Obama’s foreign policy. Jeremy Scahill, Michelle Goldberg, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (so impressive..clearly a sober rising star in the Dem party) and Peter Beinart. Scahill ripped it up calling the rhetoric at the Dem convention “jingoism and revisionism” about U.S. foreign policy. Talked about how absurd it was for Biden to be bringing up specific numbers about how many Americans have died and been injured in that war based on a “pack of lies”. How Kerry and Biden voted for the Iraq war resolution. Scahill talked about Obama’s drone strikes, Afghanistan, Iraq. Not much talk about Iran (actually do not think any) no discussion on the I/P issue. Scahill swiped the few challenges to what he was saying down with quick well thought out responses and facts facts. One thing that Scahill said that I have not ever heard before is that Cofer Black is on Romney’s foreign policy team.