-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.fair.org/activism/npr-israel-quiet.html
}}}>Begin
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting 112 W. 27th Street New York, NY
10001
ACTION ALERT:
For NPR, Violence Is Calm if It�s Violence Against Palestinians
January 10, 2002
Before the January 9 gun battle on the Gaza Strip, National Public
Radio (NPR) had for weeks been telling its listeners that
Israel/Palestine was in a period of �relative quiet.�
�Morning Edition� anchor Bob Edwards on January 3 stated that U.S.
envoy Anthony Zinni was coming to the region during �a time of
comparative quiet.� In another report the same day, correspondent
Linda Gradstein referred to �the relative calm of the past few
weeks.� Other NPR reports have mentioned the �recent calm� (1/5/02)
or the �fragile period of quiet� (1/7/02).
What NPR means by this was spelled out most explicitly by Linda
Gradstein in a January 4 report on the envoy�s mission. "You know,
there's been actually three weeks of relative quiet,� she said. �Only
one Israeli has been killed in those three weeks, as opposed to 44
Israelis who were killed when Zinni was here last time in November
and early December."
What Gradstein didn�t mention-- and what someone who relied on NPR for their Middle
Eastern news would have little idea of -- was that this has been in no way a period of
calm for Palestinians. In fact, in the three-week
period that Gradstein referred to, at least 26 Palestinians were killed by occupation
forces-- more than one a day.
Media critic Ali Abunimah documented the killings in a letter of protest to NPR
(1/8/02), starting with 13-year-old Rami Khamis Al-Zorob, shot in the head on December
13 while playing near his home in Rafah, Gaza. Most of
the deaths cited by Abunimah were of unarmed civilians; six were minors, ranging in
age from 12 to 17.
But none of these deaths received much attention from NPR, leaving the impression that
calm for Israelis was calm for Palestinians as well. One of the few times that the
Palestinian toll was even vaguely referred to was i
n this December 24 exchange between "All Things Considered" anchor Robert Siegel and
correspondent Peter Kenyon:
SIEGEL: �There was a resumption of violence today, I gather, a shooting of a Jewish
settler.�
KENYON: �That's right, the first such shooting of a Jewish settler after a week of
comparative quiet. There have been some deaths on the Palestinian side in the past
week. But tonight a Jewish settler was shot in the ches
t, seriously wounded by Palestinian gunmen up near Nablus and the West Bank. One of
the gunmen was also shot, and he was killed.�
Kenyon agrees with Siegel�s claim that December 24 marked a �resumption of violence,�
even while acknowledging that �there have been some deaths on the Palestinian side.�
In fact, there had been at least five Palestinians
killed by Israeli forces in the previous week, including 12-year-old Muhammad
Huneidek, shot in the chest at a checkpoint near the Neve Dekalim settlement near
Gaza. Are we to conclude, then, that the killing of Palestin
ians is not violence?
That�s the contention of the Israeli government, and NPR appears to take this position
seriously. Here�s a January 5 report by Kenyon:
�The raids into the West Bank and Gaza Strip have continued. They were yesterday in
the West Bank village of Tel up near Nablus. They killed one Palestinian; four
arrested. The army said they were all Hamas members.... Bu
t the Israelis don't consider these military raids to be violence. They consider that
doing what Yasser Arafat should have been doing, by their rights, which is arresting
these people and rounding them up.�
The unequal treatment of Israeli and Palestinian deaths is a long-standing pattern at
NPR; a FAIR study of six months of the network�s coverage (Extra!, 11-12/01) found
that 81 percent of Israeli conflict-related deaths w
ere reported, but only 34 percent of Palestinian deaths. Strikingly, NPR was even less
likely to report the deaths of Palestinian minors killed; only 20 percent of these
deaths were reported, as compared to 89 percent of
Israeli minors� deaths. While NPR was more likely to cover Israeli civilian deaths
than those of Israeli security personnel (84 percent vs. 69 percent), the reverse was
true with Palestinians (20 percent vs. 72 percent).
Of course, NPR is not the only outlet that has misreported the Israeli/Palestinian
conflict by downplaying violence against Palestinians. When a battle in
Israeli-occupied Gaza recently left four Israeli soldiers and two
Hamas guerrillas dead, the New York Times described the story on its front page
(1/10/02): �Palestinian gunmen in Gaza put an end to a lull in the violence, ambushing
and killing four Israeli soldiers before being shot de
ad.� The fact that the story inside acknowledges that �at least 20 Palestinians have
died violently� in recent weeks only underscores how some violence doesn�t seem to
register with mainstream U.S. media.
ACTION: Please contact the NPR�s ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin to ask for an end to NPR�s
double standard in reporting on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and for equal
treatment of all victims of violence, regardless of eth
nicity or nationality.
CONTACT:
Jeffrey Dvorkin
NPR Ombudsman
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
As always, please remember that your comments are taken more
seriously if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
your correspondence.
To read Abunimah's letter to NPR, see:
www.abunimah.org/nprletters/020108calm.html
End<{{{
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