NYT Buries, Distorts NPR Exec’s Anti-Jewish Comments
Plus ça change, as they say. Here we go again. The New York Times once more essentially conceals an anti-Jewish incident. In a sting operation against NPR, officials of the radio network were caught on camera listening to anti-Jewish slurs about Jewish ownership of the media. A Times story on the controversy published March 8 on-line and in print on March 9 didn’t get around even to hinting at the anti-Jewish comments until the 20th paragraph of a 23-paragraph story:
The fake group members bring up topics like Jewish ownership of media companies in an apparent effort to get Mr. Schiller talking. They tell him that their group was founded “by a few members of the Muslim Brotherhood in America” and had donated money to Muslim schools. (“Facing Lawmakers’ Fire, NPR Sees New Setback”)
What the sting agents actually say is they wouldn’t be “too upset about maybe a little bit less Jew influence of money into NPR.” In response, Schiller observes that he doesn’t find “Zionist or pro-Israel” ideas at NPR, “even among funders. I mean it’s there in those who own newspapers, obviously, but no one owns NPR.”
The Times’ vaguely worded description is both incomplete and deceptive, giving no indication that NPR executives gave tacit approval to bigoted comments by their affable silence during much of the hoaxters’ commentary. Nor did reporters Brian Stelter and Elizabeth Jensen note that Schiller himself wasn’t just a listener, but interjected his own offensive statements in an apparent effort to curry favor.
Additionally, the paper entirely omits mention of the striking response of NPR executive Betsy Liley when the bogus Islamist donors call NPR “National Palestinian Radio.” She laughs saying: “Oh, is that right. That’s good. I like that.”
The Times offers no hint that such an exchange recalls the decades-long record of biased NPR coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The obfuscation continues a long, dishonorable pattern of ignoring anti-Jewish rhetoric.
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