On the Lookout for Bias at NPR
DoD
leaves the impression that Jewish settlement in the West Bank and
Jerusalem is the main obstacle to an accord between Israel and the
Palestinians. Meanwhile the unrelenting villification of Jews by Arab
media, religious leaders and government institutions remains a largely
taboo subject at the public network. During the Second Intifada, NPR's
coverage had become so unbalanced that it prompted a flood of
complaints from members of the Jewish community, who traditionally
were staunch supporters of the public network. CAMERA produced
numerous studies documenting the tilted coverage and ran full-page ads
calling attention to the issue. The blatantly one-sided reporting
diminished in the face of sustained public protest and NPR began to
provide more balanced coverage, including more segments highlighting
facets of Israeli life separate from the grinding conflict with the
Palestinians. But recent examples make clear, the temptation to revert
to old habits is ever-present and the need for constant vigilance in
holding NPR accountable remains.
Again, NPR (falsely) blames Israel for housing discrimination
An All Things Considered segment by NPR's Jerusalem bureau chief,
Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, on Nov. 26, 2009, describes the eviction of
Palestinian families from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. In a
familiar scenario, a Palestinian spokesman's allegations are amplified
by a human rights organization and an oft-quoted Israeli activist.
Token balance is supplied by including a brief statement by an Israeli
official that fails to address the specific charges leveled. Genuine
balance could be provided by Israeli experts who have studied the
problem, but they are not called upon. The story promotes the charge
that Israel uses discriminatory practices to uproot Arabs from their
neighborhoods in East Jerusalem in order to establish a stronger
Jewish presence. Garcia-Navarro generalizes a specific dispute over
the demolition of illegally built homes into the accusation of a broad
pattern of Israeli discrimination.
Garcia-Navarro interviews Daniel Seidemann, an activist whose work
focuses on preventing Jews from purchasing property and living in East
Jerusalem. He has been the go-to man for similar pieces by NPR, the
Guardian, NY Times, The Forward and the Washington Post, alleging
discrimination against Arabs in the permitting process and in the
selective enforcement of laws concerning illegal structures. Seidemann
misrepresents the situation, but since the piece omits a direct
response to his charges the impression is conveyed that his statements
are unassailable.
Indicative of the lopsidedness of the piece is the word count:
Seidemann, Human Rights Watch and the Palestinian advocate, Fakhri Abu
Diab are given 277 words to argue their case against Israel. In
addition, much of Garcia-Navarro's own narrative lends support to
them. On the opposing side is Israeli Deputy Prime Minister, Dan
Meridor, whose 59 word statement focuses on the need to negotiate all
the issues of contention between Israel and the Palestinians.
One charge repeated by Garcia-Navarro is
Palestinian and international rights groups say that since 1967, only
a few thousand building permits have been given to Palestinians in
East Jerusalem, even though the Palestinian population since then has
almost quadrupled - to 270,000.
Two experts capable of rebutting these charges are Justus Reid Weiner,
a scholar of international law at the Jerusalem Center for Public
Affairs (JCPA), and former Jerusalem city planner, Israel Kimhi, from
the Jerusalem Center for Israel Studies. Both have authored books on
the subject of the NPR segment. But neither appeared on NPR. The
question of discrimination in providing building permits was the basis
for a study done by Weiner titled Illegal Construction in Jerusalem: A
Variation on an Alarming Global, and published in 2002 by the JCPA.
Weiner examined Jerusalem municipal records and found no evidence of
discrimination.
Contrary to the claims voiced in the NPR piece, as far back as 2000,
the Jerusalem municipality's Department of Policy Planning approved
plans to authorize the issuance of 33,000 permits for new housing
units in the Arab sector of Jerusalem. Permit issuance was hampered by
the Arab habit of going around the system and not applying for a
permit. The motive for evading the official process may be to avoid
the cost — which is identical for Jews and Arabs alike — or to build
in a location where it is already suspected that a dispute will
arise.
For those who chose to work within the system, Weiner determined that
a similar percentage of permit applications were approved in the
Jewish and Arab sectors of Jerusalem for the years covered by the
study (1993-2001). This refutes a key element of the argument often
made that Israel is Judaizing the city, tipping the balance of the
population more towards Jewish preponderance. In fact, the trends are
the opposite, as an increasing proportion of Jerusalem's population is
Arab. In 1967, Arabs were 25% of the population of the city, while
today they constitute 35%.
Another claim put forth in the NPR piece is that while Palestinian
illegal buildings are subject to demolition, "Jewish groups that built
illegally here are not subject to the same consequences." The JCPA
study actually found just the opposite — that a higher proportion of
illegal structures built in the Jewish sector were demolished than in
the Arab sector. In part, the hesitation about demolishing illegal
Arab building has to do with the negative media publicity that often
results when Israel seeks to remove unlicensed structures.
Kimhi's book, Arab Building in Jerusalem 1967-1997 delves into the
difficulties Arabs have faced in Jerusalem, but unlike Seidemann and
NPR, he clarifies that these problems are not due to discriminatory
practices. According to Kimhi, one of the problems is that cooperating
with the city's planning and permitting authorities might be viewed as
collaboration with the Israelis, something that East Jerusalem Arabs
are loathe to do. Kimhi also explains that differences between past
Jewish and Arab land registration practices complicate the process.
The NPR story also misleads by leaving out crucial information about
the site slated for demolition that would offer an alternate
explanation to alleging that Israel seeks to drive Palestinians out of
Jerusalem. This explanation was given in an article appearing in the
left leaning Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz on Dec. 10, 2009:
The 88 houses at issue were constructed without permits in the Al-
Bustan area of Silwan and are slated for demolition. They stand in an
area known as the King's Garden, defined as being of great
archaeological importance by the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The Ha'aretz article goes on to mention a recommendation to relocate
the residents to homes in other parts of Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem municipality may offer to voluntarily relocate some
1,500 Palestinian residents of the city's Silwan neighborhood -
currently living on top of an archaeological site - to alternative
lots in East Jerusalem, residents say.
Ignoring hatred spewed against Jews
There is chronic refusal at NPR to report candidly on the hatred of
Israel and Jews that is widespread and active in Arab and Muslim
countries. This is once more evident in two recent segments on frayed
relations between Israel and its erstwhile friends in the region.
Peter Kenyon introduces an All Things Considered segment on Oct. 26,
2009 by describing the chill in relations between Israel and Egypt and
Jordan with the strikingly misleading assertion, "The Arab media is
rarely sympathetic to Israel." The piece then discusses the Arab media
boycott directed towards Israel as due to their "outrage against the
Jewish state" for its treatment of the Palestinians. Unmentioned is
the extreme bigotry and paranoid hatred directed at Jews and Israel in
the Arab media. MEMRI and Palestinian Media Watch, sites that
translate Arab media, routinely carry examples of these expressions.
Two examples below are all too typical.
On Oct. 1, 2009, the Egyptian government sponsored newspaper, Al-
Ahram, published a piece claiming that the troubles in the region
proved the truth of the infamous 20th century anti-semitic forgery,
the "Protocols of the Elders Zion" stating:
Although we refuse to recognize the protocols with which the Zionists
seek to deceive us...
Every escalation [in the region] proves [the truth of] these
protocols' every letter and every implication...
For centuries, the Zionists have had a secret plan to bring down the
regimes of all countries and to replace them with [their own]
tyrannical regime...
They fight every emergence of excellence and distinction among the
ignorant, using women, money, intrigue, and schemes to do so – and all
as part of a black Jewish plan.
On April 25, 2009, Egyptian official and former advisor to UNESCO,
Muhammad Yousef 'Adas, used some choice words to blame the Jews for
the world's economic problems and at the same time deny the Holocaust:
The reason for the whole issue is that [the Jews] meddle with the
economy, thus gaining control over nations. They finance wars. They
are the cause of wars and economic corruption. They helped other
countries to shackle Germany, by means of the World War I treaties,
with which we are familiar. [...]
Like Roger Garoudy said, the number of [victims] is very
controversial. These figures emerged from a myth, not from facts.
[...]
By the time 'Adas was finished with his rant, the Holocaust was
described as a scheme to loot Swiss banks and resulted in no more than
5,000 Jewish dead in total.
Similarly, a Morning Edition segment on Oct. 16, 2009 on strained
relations between Israel and Turkey obfuscates rising prejudice
against Jews in that nation. It describes the furor over a Turkish
television program's vivid portrayal of brutal acts by Israelis in
Gaza. The segment supports the proposition that Turkey's new political
orientation distancing itself from Israel was exacerbated by Israeli
actions in Gaza. But NPR ignores a crucial part of the story. In 2006,
a widely popular Turkish movie with American actors called Valley of
the Wolves featured a Jewish doctor who specialized in cutting out the
organs of Iraqi prisoners to sell to wealthy clients in the West. This
revival of the ancient blood libel against Jews is endemic in the
Muslim world (and parts of Europe as well). It raises the question as
to whether Turkish opinion is turning against Israel out of revulsion
with events in Gaza or reflecting an ideological turn towards Islamism
and superstitious demonization of Jews.
Because of NPR's prevailing perspective that Israeli actions are the
driving force for events and attitudes in the Middle East, this topic
remains unexplored — and listeners are deprived of a full
understanding of events.
Language bias skews the story
Garcia-Navarro's piece is not the only one to expose NPR's too-
frequent institutional slant. On November 11, veteran commentator
Daniel Schorr offered a brief update on efforts to get Israel and the
Palestinians to the negotiating table. Schorr portrays Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as unyielding and dismisses his efforts as
insufficient, arguing
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not halt settlement
activity, and he offers only restraint, a nonstarter for peace
negotiations. Netanyahu calls for immediate negotiations looking
towards an independent Palestinian state. But his precondition is a
demilitarized state, another nonstarter. A state that cannot defend
itself is not a sovereign state.
Schorr then describes the Palestinian president who rejected
Netanyahu's overtures, as
the moderate Mahmoud Abbas.
But whose position is really more moderate? Schorr's comment appears
to be based on a fundamental disregard for Palestinian aggression. He
dismisses out of hand the notion that a Palestinian state has to be
demilitarized, despite the record of Palestinian violence and the
ongoing incendiary rhetoric against Israel. He reflexively dubs Abbas
a "moderate," ignoring the fact that in August, Abbas hosted the Fatah
Party Congress, which rejected the legitimacy of the Jewish state and
affirmed the right to launch "resistance"(violence) at a future time
of its choosing. Netanyahu, meanwhile, has reiterated his willingness
to enter negotiations for a two state solution.
This habitual negativity in judging Israel was on display recently as
well in a Nov. 20 interview with Farah Pandith, a State Department
official responsible for outreach to Muslims. Morning Edition co-host
Steve Inskeep asks:
You don't get any questions, for example, hypothetically, why is the
United States such a blind supporter of Israel?
There are many ways Inskeep could have framed the question. He could
even have addressed a reality overwhelmingly ignored on NPR: "Do you
find yourself having to address the scapegoating of Israel by various
regimes seeking to deflect attention from their own conduct and
domestic problems?"
America's alleged blind support is a recurring theme at NPR. Inskeep
and Garcia-Navarro discussed this same topic on June 3, 2009 during
which Garcia-Navarro stated,
You know, for the past eight years under the Bush administration the
general consensus here is among analysts and even among government
officials, is that Israel was pretty much allowed to do whatever it
wished.
In fact the Bush Administration's Road Map demanded significant
tangible concessions on Israel's part as has every peace initiative
supported by the US. Yet Inskeep and Garcia-Navarro only see blind
support for Israel. Who is blind here?
Inskeep and Garcia-Navarro's perception of blind support for Israel is
also reflected in the inordinate coverage given to J-Street, an
organization established to counter traditional Jewish support for
Israel. NPR devoted two segments over the course of a few days to this
fringe organization that advocates positions opposed by most of the
Jewish community in the United States. Considering J-Street's marginal
status in the Jewish community, one can only attribute this attention
to the support it has at NPR.
As these examples make evident, although NPR has climbed down from its
extreme, biased treatment of Israel during the Second Intifada, the
problems with its coverage remain everpresent. NPR could break from
tradition and substantially improve its coverage if it would start to
focus on the endemic prejudice against Jews that permeates the media
in Arab and Muslim countries.
Why not a series exploring how Jews and Israel are portrayed in Muslim/
Arab schools and textbooks, in news coverage, in the themes of the
culture — films, books, television — and the messages of the mosque?
Perhaps listeners could then judge whether Israel's conduct — such as
the policy of granting building permits in Jerusalem — or Israel's
existence itself rankles its neighbors.
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=4&x_outlet=28&x_article=1772
Al Nakba
NPR is filled with the 'bama's butt boys..
DoD
National Palisimian Radio.......
cornholio
DoD, I just heard a speech given by a director of CAMERA on *EXACTLY*
this topic. He stated that NPR has ignored all efforts to correct
their biased,
fallacious reporting. Due to that, CAMERA is trying to get NPR's
funding
yanked at the Federal level. You see, a requirement of any tax-funded
broadcaster
is unbiased, factual reporting. CAMERA has already managed to get at
least
one corporate sponsor to yank it's funding. Hopefully, ACT for America
will follow
their lead and ALL members of ACT for America will cease donating
money to
support NPR. Of course, for all we know, NPR's primary source of
funding may
be islamonazi states.
last_per...@yahoo.com
> National Public Radio's (NPR) news coverage of the Middle East often
> leaves the impression that Jewish settlement in the West Bank and
> Jerusalem is the main obstacle to an accord between Israel and the
> Palestinians.
Because it is, shit-for-brains.
Even the people at NPR get fed up with ZioNazi scum, Doodoo.
This is your lesson for today Doodoo, after the one teaching you
not to wipe boogers on the walls.