CNN’s Dishonest Duo, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, strike again

By now, the latest dishonesty from cable news network CNN’s Biased Duo, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, has become widely known. The Duo lied about the outspoken Palestinian-American member of Congress from Michigan, Rashida Tlaib, claiming that she had made an “antisemitic” statement about that state’s Attorney General. Millions were exposed to the lie, both on air and as it reverberated across the internet.

Here’s what actually happened. Tapper and Bash suggested that Tlaib had accused Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel of seeking strong charges against pro-Palestinian student protesters “because she [Nessel] is Jewish.” The Duo based their charge against Tlaib on an article in a Detroit newspaper that quoted her. Tapper and Bash obviously didn’t bother to read the article, though, because Tlaib nowhere in it mentioned or even referred to Nessel’s Jewishness. Instead, she spoke about systemic anti-Palestinian bigotry.

Tapper and Bash’s dishonest reports ignited a firestorm of criticism, but the Duo still stuck to their story for a few days, even though Steve Neavling, the Detroit reporter whose article they had used to manufacture their slur, said repeatedly and loudly that they were wrong. Finally, the two read out half-hearted ‘clarifications,’ which included no apologies — for libeling a brave woman who regularly gets death threats. The mainstream’s power is clear; Bash’s tweet promoting Tapper’s lie got 3.4 million views on Twitter, while Neavling’s response refuting them only reached 127,000.

Two points:

First: The bias at CNN about Israel/Palestine is not limited to the Duo’s latest dishonesty. It is comprehensive and systematic, is guided from the very top of the network, and has gone unreported, at CNN or anywhere else in the U.S. mainstream, despite a shocking exposé last February in Britain’s prestigious Guardian newspaper. 

Second: The Duo’s strategy is only the latest blatant example of how Israel’s mainstream media apologists try to dismiss all criticism as “antisemitism” — which includes an ongoing and unfortunately largely successful effort to hide the truth that Jewish-Americans, whether on campuses or elsewhere, are among the loudest advocates against Israel’s war on Gaza.

This site has regularly pointed out that the Guardian report, by one of the British paper’s most senior correspondents, Chris McGreal, continues to be blacked out in America. McGreal found a half-dozen sources inside the cable network, and also got his hands on more than a dozen documents, which revealed that CNN’s bias is orchestrated from the very top. Directives “include tight restrictions on quoting Hamas and reporting other Palestinian perspectives while Israeli government statements are taken at face value.”

Here’s another quotation from the article: 

“CNN is facing a backlash from its own staff over editorial policies they say have led to a regurgitation of Israeli propaganda and the censoring of Palestinian perspectives in the networks’ coverage of the war in Gaza.” 

If McGreal found whistleblowers inside CNN, surely U.S. mainstream reporters could also track them down. However, 8 months have passed, and the American press has ignored the story completely, even to the point of not citing the Guardian’s report.

What’s more, the Tapper/Bash lie about antisemitism in the pro-Palestine movement will surely be trotted out in force this fall, as students return to campuses and start protesting again. This site has already reported how the New York Times and others similarly hid pro-Palestine Jewish student protesters at this spring’s encampments, while extensively quoting other Jewish students who said they suffer antisemitism. We can expect the same whitewashing again this academic year.

One question remains, about the Biased Duo. Is it possible that they truly believed that Rashida Tlaib’s quoted statement was antisemitic, against the evidence of their senses? Are they implying that they can read her mind? Since when does journalism publish or report what journalists think someone meant, as opposed to what they actually said?

Let’s be charitable, and give Tapper and Bash the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they really did believe what they reported? But their bias has become a pattern. Here’s one example, and here’s another. At the very least, CNN should remove the Duo from covering Palestine, because they can’t be trusted.