Jake Tapper, the prominent CNN journalist, lied yesterday on X. Pro-Palestinian protesters had confronted his CNN colleague Dana Bash at a literary event in Washington, D.C., and he told his 3 million followers that they had “targeted” her because she is “Jewish.” We’ll get to the specifics of this incident shortly, but first let’s remind Tapper that he and CNN continue to ignore a shocking exposé in the British Guardian newspaper last February that showed that the U.S. cable outlet’s bias about reporting Israel’s war on Gaza is not a series of uncoordinated accidents, but a conscious and complex policy directed from the very top of the network.
The Guardian’s reporter, Chris McGreal, got 6 network insiders in multiple CNN newsrooms to talk anonymously, and he also got his hands on “more than a dozen internal memos and emails.” Here was the first sentence of his 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 network’s coverage of the war in Gaza.”
Here’s more:
“. . . daily news decisions are set by a flow of directives from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta that have set strict guidelines on coverage.
“They include tight restrictions on quoting Hamas and reporting other Palestinian perspectives while Israel government statements are taken at face value.
Then, even more extraordinary:
“In addition, every story on the conflict must be cleared by the Jerusalem bureau before broadcast or publication.”
You might have expected that the Guardian’s astonishing exposé would have prompted significant coverage in the U.S. But, in the week following the article: nothing. Nothing in the New York Times; nothing on National Public Radio; nothing in the Washington Post; nothing on National Public Radio; nothing on the PBS News Hour. And of course nothing on CNN itself, not even an effort to refute the charges.
Let’s be clear; the Guardian is not a fringe, alternative newspaper. It is 203 years old, arguably Britain’s best mainstream publication, and in recent years it has been expanding its coverage into the United States.
Back to Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. Tapper’s tweet included a 2 minute and 14 second video of two women protesters who, one after the other, jumped up and yelled at Bash, (at an event where she was launching her book on an unrelated subject). They shouted about genocide, and Palestinian prisoners, and criticized CNN’s coverage. Only a couple of sentences could have raised questions. The second protester shouted: “You want millions from Zionists. From AIPAC. Your home is worth millions.” (AIPAC of course is the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group. A report in the Forward quoted the organization’s denial that they pay Bash.)
But where’s the anti-Semitism? AIPAC does give millions — not to journalists like Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, but to pro-Israel political candidates; the organization has donated an estimated $100 million so far this year, and helped unseat two pro-Palestine House members: Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush. Pointing out the lobbying group’s outsized influence is not anti-Jewish, but simple accuracy. Instead, if you Google “Jake Tapper/AIPAC,” you will get no results. Surely instead of slandering these young women to millions of his followers Tapper should start to report at length on AIPAC’s influential interventions in our political life?
The young protesters were unquestionably disruptive, and their tactics were probably not the best way to win people over. But they’ve almost certainly spent nearly the entire past year seeing horrifying videos from Gaza of slaughtered and dismembered Palestinian children — scenes that will never appear on CNN, or even be accurately and fully reported there.
And Dana Bash has been one of the more biased pro-Israel journalists on CNN. Younger people especially may remember how back in May she actually compared the U.S. campus protests to the rise of Hitler’s Germany: “[The protests are] . . . hearkening back to the 1930s in Europe. And I do not say that lightly. The fear among Jews in this country is palpable right now.” Did Tapper criticize his colleague for implying that the student protesters were modern-day Nazis?
That said, it’s unfair to single out Bash. That Guardian report last February explained convincingly how her network’s coverage of Israel/Palestine is rigged from the very top. Jake Tapper found time to make the false charge that the protesters disrupted Bash’s event because she is “Jewish.” Will he ever get around to reporting about the documented systematic bias at his own network?
Love & Hate: A Decolonial Psychoanalysis with Dr. Lara Sheehi
This is the latest in our series of conversations with Dr. Lara Sheehi. We will continue to talk about the genocide in Palestine, the resistance, psychic intrusion, and psy-ops. In this discussion we will also tackle feelings of love for the people, and feelings of hatred towards one’s enemies.
Lara Sheehi (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar. She is the founding faculty director of the Psychoanalysis and the Arab World Lab. Lara’s work takes up decolonial and anti-oppressive approaches to psychoanalysis, with a focus on liberation struggles in the Global South. She is co-author with Stephen Sheehi of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine (Routledge, 2022) which won the Middle East Monitor’s 2022 Palestine Book Award for Best Academic Book. Lara is on the advisory board for the USA-Palestine Mental Health Network and the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. Lara is currently working on a new book, From the Clinic to the Street: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures (Pluto, 2025).
https://www.youtube.com/live/EcshN3htXmY?si=4mWqAnUAUJafCt9z
An interview with a young man, child really, in the Gaza death camp. You may be interested to learn, as a result of my past career I have been contacted by ten or so of my former pupils who now run Mosques in Canada, the US, Europe etc that are each getting on average 7 to 10 white people a week every week, 70% single women, wishing to convert to Islam when asked what has impelled them to become Muslim they are saying that it is the faith, humanity and unbreakable courage of the Palestinians, people like the redoubtable Myriam Francois. So to Gaza… this little boy is a man of iron
This is a segment from The Electronic Intifada’s day 334 livestream. Ali Abunimah, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Jon Elmer and Asa Winstanley were joined by contributor Abubaker Abed from the Gaza Strip, and Hatem Abudayyeh, the national chair of the US Palestinian Community Network. You can watch the entire broadcast here:
https://youtu.be/CTjR6DyM0XI?si=U-0QsHh64GH4oKB2
Thank you James North! Appreciate the reporting on journalistic bias at CNN.
But I am also confused by this piece, the title and content. Saying Tapper “Continues to ignore” the bias suggests that he is an observer rather than one of the most eager proponents of that bias.
The last sentence asks “Will he ever get around to reporting about the documented systematic bias at his own network?” Well he would have give himself a starring role in his own report if he were to attempt that. The tweet that this piece focuses on is just a tiny sample of the bigotry and hasbara we have come to expect from Tapper.
Mr. North,
It’s good that you point all this out, though for some people it seems like one of those obvious, recurring facts of life in the United States, like the fact that the sun appears over the eastern horizon every morning.
I hope it is not too far off topic if I add an observation and question about the BBC here. I often wake up in the early morning, when my local public radio station carries BBC overseas coverage. It’s an important source of news about Palestine/Israel for me; better in many respects than the big networks that I see and hear during the day.
Recently I’ve noticed BBC news people interjecting, when interviewing any Palestinian or pro-Palestinian or objective observer (e.g., from a UN agency), what is recognizably the Israeli position. E.g., “Israel was targeting terrorists,” or “Palestinians have been contaminating their drinking water.” In one such case, the moderator indicated that he was required to note that Israel would dispute what the person being interviewed had said. Recently I heard Noura Erakat comment (on the “The Katie Helper Show”) on her similar observation. She said that she had not seen any official new protocol for the BBC, but she inferred there might be one.
I’ve looked for more information about whether there is such a new protocol for the BBC, what it says if it exists, and how it came about. I have not found it. But I did find this story from the Telegraph (a conservative paper in the UK), headlined:
The report is referred to as the “Asserson report.” https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-The-British-Israeli-lawyer-holding-the-BBC-to-account-1001463725 From the excerpts I’ve seen, I’m not impressed by the methodology or conclusions, but I haven’t seen the full report.
I found several excited stories on line in publications aimed at Israeli or Jewish audiences, where it has evidently made a splash. I infer that Israel and supporters of Israel have been unhappy with the BBC for quite some time, starting before the recent limited restrictions on weapons supplied to Israel.
I infer that BBC has made some change or changes in response to such pressure, but I don’t know. I wonder if someone with more knowledge of the situation in Britain would wish to comment.
I must admit to not want to login here. As far back as the Obama adminstration Captcha had been reported to assist drone operators in targeting. I’d like to know that this is no longer true, and if it is true, then I’d like to see Mondoweiss find a more peaceful alternative to screening out the bots.