These folks organized a protest of NPR’s coverage of Israel that actually seems to have happened yesterday.
The questions are:
Is NPR biased? The organizers seem to think they’re biased against Israel. Why do they think this? Here is a link from the organizers… note the lack of specifics that would allow one to assess the claims, and the reliance (for persuasive numbers) on the plausibly biased assignment of perspective on the part of the speaker: http://home.attbi.com/~jat.action/protest.htm#bias .
Here are the best specific complaints I could find:
These are presented as ‘glowing hot coals’ on the part of a [different] protest organizer. This strikes me as less than frank. Were you to take exception to every possible inaccuracy and perceived bias of the sort listed above, you’d have to be screaming at the news all throughout the newscast. Which I do, myself, at times. But then you have to be pretty paranoid to pick out a pattern in the flood of such minor violations.
Personally, having never identified a pattern of anti-Israel bias in my own sometimes constant NPR surveillance, I assume the real reason for such a strong reaction is because NPR does report on the experience of palestinians living in Israel, the occupied territories, and refugee camps, leading to…
Is it a demonstration of such a bias to be airing such stories? (Or to be making ‘errors’ like the ones listed above?)
I think most of us would agree that no people deserves to be denied nationhood and dominated by another people-- however threatened the rulers may be by the ruled. This is true for the palestinians in the middle east, just as it was for the kurds in Iraq as well as the kurds and Armenians in Turkey, the Irish, arguably the Basques, and so on ad nauseum.
I doubt that the organizers felt it was right for the kurds to be denied self-governance, and I suspect that they didn’t feel it was bias when NPR aired stories of their lives under Saddam Hussein before 1991. So…
3. Do US conservatives have a double standard when it comes to Israel? If so, is this an acceptable double standard to have?
I note that the organizers have opted not to suggest a reason, such as anti-semitism, for the bias they perceive. For this, at least, they are to be congratulated on their maturity.
I don’t think they’re really biased against Isreal. I think they love Isreal/Palestine. It’s all I ever hear about on NPR. Seriously, every time I tune in to NPR, they’re talking about the damn Middle East. I’m sick to death of it…
To tell the truth I don’t know, never even heard of NPR up until now, but what I would like to see is some sort of confirmation of the allegations made from a less partizan source.
National Public Radio, one of the only sources of non-commercial broadcasting in the U.S.
Just an opinion, but I don’t believe there’s any such animal as “nonbiased” coverage of Israel/Palestinian issues. Given that both sides have done, and continue to do, utterly reprehensible things, any coverage at all is guaranteed to be perceived as biased by at least half the people listening to it.
I have to say some of the allegations look to be unfounded, going back to the sewage workers story, the NPR’s correspondant in Palestine witnessed these technicians at work and talked to them ansd they said that were having major problem repairing a pump hich is currently sending human effluence into the streets at Rafah as they are constantly shot at from a nearby Israeli sniper tower.
Another thing is, is the Baltimore Zionist District really a great source of information on the municapal workers of Rafah?
Thank you for that link to the ‘Dishonest Reporting Award’, which is apparently dishonestly named: it should be called ‘Dishonest reporting about Israel award.’ In fact the whole site is about the middle east, but the honesty-seeking folks named their site a bit more generally as honestreporting.com.
Particularly amusing is their page defining bias. (Meaning of course bias in reporting about Israel.) There they give example after example of bias against Israel. (Many conatining gross factual inaccuaracies and misleading statements themselves, I notice.) Were they unable to find any examples at all of bias against palestinians? Do they expect anyone to believe that they are opposed to bias generally?
They should rename their site ‘More bias towards Israel, please!.com’.
Also, the quote: “whitewashed a history of Arab violence and extremism while attempting to paint Israel as a colonial power,” is attributed to a single ‘member,’ meaning a member of a group that pretends no unbiasedness towards the question. The site actually makes this clear, and I wanted to ensure that no on reading the quote here would think it was from a fair review of the series.
I recall several parts of the series to be quite interesting and reasonably balanced. I wonder what an impartial review of it might say?
The initials “BZD”, the media analysts cited in the article, stand for Baltimore Zionist District (according to them they are an organization set up to build and foster relations between the state of Israel and Baltimore).
The point is I am so wary of these sort of articles, which are bandied around by both sides, and quite often, the allegations of bias don’t stand up under the spotlight.
As I see it, every media news source is biased in one way or another. And most everyone brings their own biases to bear when listening to/reading/watching a media news report.
Which can get quite entertaining sometimes; my former father-in-law used to use Rush Limbaugh as an example of the liberal controlled media. Mind you, this was the same dude who thought that Ronald Reagan was a communist sympathizer (I kid you not).
So the trick is to find a couple of sources or more. These days with the power of the internet, it can be quite easy to get sources in other coumtries. From the wealth of information available, you can sometimes get the sense that the truth lies somewhere between.
As to the OP: my personal opinion is that NPR tries more than some outlets to present fairly both sides (or all sides) of an on-going situation, or to present an alternate viewpoint in an honest effort to broaden people’s thinking. I’m not sure they always succeed – indeed, I sometimes think that attempting to present an opposing viewpoint is automatically grounds for dismissal by some of the less-deep rhinkers in the world. But at least they try.
Right, and the Academy Award is dishonestly named, since there are many academies. People might think Marisa Tomei won a prize from the American Academy of Actuaries.
Back to the OP. Here’s a detailed criticism of the controversial presentation of The Mideast: A Century of Conflict
The above is just a summary. The full letter has a great many supporting details.
Here’s a longer ‘supporting quote’ from the ADL piece you cite:
I swear. It’s so confused, I wonder if the authors are schizophrenic. The whole piece is an invitation to share a delusion. It just goes to show that when you’re unable to consider the possibility of any flaw on your own side, you have to turn back triple-somersaults to attack anyone less blinkered than yourself.
Let’s read this sentence by sentence and see what the point is:
"The impression is left with the listener of Israeli intransigence to negotiations and peace, and a Palestinian/Arab willingness to accept Israel’s existence and seek reconciliation. "
OK, they claim that they are about to give evidence that the story biases the listener by presenting the Israelis as trying to avoid negotiations and avoid peace. Simultaneously, they claim, the listener is led to believe that the other side wants reconcialiation and is willing to accept Israel’s existence.
“For example, in Part 5, while not stated explicitly, the program implies that Israeli leaders responded to Arab peace overtures grudgingly.”
So, their first point is acknowledged to be ‘not stated explicitly’. Meaning not stated at all, but somehow implied by the way things were said, e.g. word choice, tone of voice, etc. So it’s a totally subjective thing. There’s no way for you to judge for yourself without hearing it. And what is it that not said in this way? It’s that the Israelis reponded ‘grudgungly’. Look. English is a rich language. intransigence is a much, much stronger word than grudging. In fact, intransigence implies a lack of faith, while grudging implies unhappiness, or perhaps slowness. So the authors of the letter are already guilty of the same ‘not explicitly stated’ bias they accuse NPR of! They accused NPR of portraying Israel as intransigent, but they’re backing it up with (unstated) ‘evidence’ (though I hesistate to call it that) of grudgingness.
“Golda Meir rejects Sadat’s overture in 1971 because “she wanted a full-blown peace treaty” thus presenting her in a negative light.”
Somehow, Meir’s desire for peace presents her in a negative light, in the ADL’s eyes. To me, this looks like a positive thing, not a negative one. But the ADL assumes it is obvious, so obvious that no other conclusion could be reached, apparently. This might be true if one accepted their claim of intransigence, or even their reduced charge of grudgingness, but they are supposed to be supporting that claim, not begging the question.
"Similarly, Menachem Begin only agreed to negotiate with Sadat “under pressure from President Jimmy Carter.” "
Note the careful placement of the quotes, here. The ‘only’ is the ADL’s characterization of the NPR story, not a quote. Also, they don’t say anything about how Sadat’s participation was characterized. Finally, I don’t have a clue what this is similar to. The prior claim was about Meir’s goal, and this one is about Begin’s behavior. They are similar only in that they both about negotiations and Israeli leaders. Or, again, if one begs the question and accepts a priori a pattern on NPR’s part.
“The implication is that Arab leaders were ready for peace, and Israel was resistant.”
Again, the conclusion bears no relationship to the cited ‘facts’ that precede it. Nothing at all has been said yet about the Arab leaders’ posture. Nothing. And, in fact, the only reference to peace thus far is that Meir wanted it. One might make the conclusion, from the very information that the ADL includes here, that NPR presented the Arabs as not ready for peace, while the Israelis were.
“There is no mention that Sadat’s approach at this time represented the first public willingness by an Arab leader to recognize Israel’s right to exist and that this elicited a positive Israeli response.”
A total non sequitur. Once again, they undermine their own argument by (this time) citing an Arab leader’s positive steps to encourage Israeli responses. But more importantly, how does this contribute to their claim of intransigence, or grudgingness? Since they introduce it as an omission on the part of NPR, they seem to think it shows a eagerness for peace on the Israeli part, or the contrary on the Arab side. How? At best, there’s a suggestion on the part of the ADL that the Arabs were unwilling to do this before, but how is that relevant to the Camp David process and how the two sides happened to come to the table?
Folks, this is not how to argue. The rest of the link is full of similarly unconvincing, poorly argued crud that could just barely resonate with the choir they’re preaching to.
FTR, the ‘Academy Awards’ are more formally known as the Awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. A more appropriate example would be if the Gay and Lesbian Academy of film called its awards the Academy awards. People looking for the Oscars might be a little confused when they got to the web site.
Also, when one proclaims oneself to be interested in honesty, one should attempt to present oneself as honestly as possible, not decribe oneself incompletely.
While this is a hideous overstatement, in general partisans of one position or another have a tendency to be offended at any report of their particular dog fight that does not trumpet the moral superiority and eventual certain triumph of their dog and distain the other guy’s dog. I suspect that this is precisely what we have going on here. In the minds of some the problem is not so much that NPR is anti-Israel as it is that NPR is not sufficently pro-Israel. In this circumstance no attempt at objectivity is suffecently objective.
Incidentally this started off as a complaint about NPR (radio) but it seems to have morphed into a complaint about a television program. There is some shifting of ground going on here.
As for those who think that NPR gives too much attention to the Middle East and the Israel-Palestine conflict, do they think the story is not important? Do they think that NPR ought to devote more time to missing child beauty contestants in Colorado or dismembered women in California? I thought we had Fox News to give headline attention to the trivial. And, yes, the No Spin Zone does make me dizzy.
The protest did extend to the public radio station in Ames, Iowa. At first there were two people marching up and down in the rain. Later they just propped their sign against a tree and went off to have coffee. If it were not for the local TV station we never would have known about it.
If anyone is biased around here, it is you, nogginhead. Like several other posters on this board, your mind is made up and, when provided with another perspective, would rather deconstruct it line by line rather than actually consider any opinions or facts which run counter to your particular world view.
I’m sorry, but didn’t the United Nations resolution which created the state of Israel also create the state of Palestine? The only people standing in the way of Palestinian statehood are the Palestinians.
If I was Sharon, I would ask Arafat (or Mahmoud Abbas) for a list of demands and then agree to every single one, depriving the PA/PLO of the opportunity to blame Israael (and the US, of course) for all their problems, and sit back and watch the fun.
You’re close to accusing me of bias. You’d better have some evidence to back that up, bub.
Reading line by line is often the only way to understand what is being said. I recommend it.
Right, and the only thing ever standing the way of American Indians enforcing their treaty rights was and is themselves, too. :rolleyes: Just open your mind, just a tiny crack, and ask if it’s just barely possible that overwhelming Israeli military might could have something to with there being no Palestinian state. Also, you might consider whether UN resolutions have much impact in this part of the world. As I recall, there are several which are patently unfair applying to Israel. So if you’re recommending that UN resolutions be observed, you’re not going to be too happy with how they apply to Israel.
This has all the insight and clarity of a drunken post-game call to sports radio 850. How long would you expect to stay in office? I mean, after you gave up Jerusalem, dismantled all settlements in the West Bank, and so forth. And I guess pat of the fun you have in mind is more Hamas and Al Aqsa bombings in Israel… or was the fun part when the IDF rolls back into all the above-mentioned places and kills lots of people? Give me a break.
** Spavined Gelding**, I think you’ve nailed it. Glad to hear about the Ames part of the ‘nationwide’ protest. The 7-part series was on NPR, though.
My guess is that if you listen to anyone discuss the Middle East for five minutes, you’ll pick up something that appears biased toward one side or the other.
Unless, of course, the speaker agrees perfectly with your own stance, in which case that person is a right-minded individual.
