Unbalanced NPR Panel Obfuscates Middle East on Rehm Show
National Public Radio’s Diane Rehm is the host of the talk radio program, “The Diane Rehm Show.” This nationally-syndicated show airs daily on more than 150 NPR member stations, including in major markets such as New York, Washington, D.C. and Boston. The April 7 program, “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in a New Arab World,” upheld NPR’s reputation for unobjective, unbalanced Arab-Israeli coverage (for example, here and here).
The show provided obfuscation and distortion from an imbalanced panel. Members included a spokesman for the Arab side, James Zogby, in addition to Aaron David Miller (former State Department advisor) and Greg Myre (NPR editor). Zogby smoothly delivered pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel propaganda. Neither Miller nor Myre directly challenged Zogby’s partisan presentation. Neither did Rehm, the host. The panel included no pro-Israeli representative to balance Zogby, an author, pro-Arab activist, and president of the Arab American Institute.
A high degree of harmony seeming to reflect a relatively uniform, unquestioned viewpoint was evident among panelists and host throughout the hour-long discussion, as is evident from a reading of the transcript.
Rehm, ignoring Palestinian intransigence and violence against Israel (for example, here and here)
provides a banal and misleading characterization of Palestinian tactics: “The Palestinians have been waiting and pushing and waiting and hoping. Is what’s happening in the Arab world going to give them the opening they need to push further?” (14 minutes into broadcast).
Zogby freely defames Israel in the broadcast, for example:
“You know, there were crimes before the Gaza war in 2008 and there have been crimes by Israel since the Gaza war. And Goldstone’s retraction of one single point in this does not nullify Israel’s behavior or its responsibility for what it’s done to the people of Gaza.” (37 minutes into broadcast).
This Zogby deception is refuted here, here, and here.
The more things change at NPR, the more they stay the same.
More from SNAPSHOTS
Professor John Quigley Falsely Condemns Israel and U.S. Support in His Syndicated Column
April 30, 2019
John B. Quigley In his widely distributed April syndicated opinion piece mainly about ISIS, the Islamist terrorist entity, John B. Quigley, an Ohio State University law professor, argues that claims of an imminent ISIS resurgence [...]
The New York Times’ Slow Reaction to Hamas Crackdown on Palestinian Protesters
April 4, 2019
The New York Times took a slight jab at Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip, in a recent story about Hamas's crackdown on Palestinian protesters who spoke out against its policies in [...]
CNN’s Zakaria Deals With U.S. Proclamation Recognizing Golan As Part Of Israel
April 3, 2019
Fareed Zakaria hosted an eight-minute discussion of the Golan matter at the end of his weekly (weekend) program, “Global Public Square “ (GPS) hour-long Cable News Network (CNN) broadcast. The broadcast, on both CNN and [...]
NY Times Reporter David Halbfinger Editorializes Israel as “Brutal”
March 6, 2019
New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief David Halbfinger Israel, according to the New York Times, is a brute. A March 3 news analysis piece—not an opinion piece—by the newspaper's Jerusalem bureau chief David Halbfinger uses [...]
Palestinian Malevolent Indoctrination Exposed; Mainstream Media Are Indifferent
February 26, 2019
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), an Israel-based non-governmental organization, analyzes and presents in English to the world the ongoing inflammatory indoctrination of Palestinians in Arabic particularly via Palestinian Authority (PA) television (West Bank). PMW is a [...]
Did WCC Activists Attend A Birthday Party Promoted by Palestinian Extremist Organization?
February 4, 2019
The video is a bit fuzzy and grainy. But the footage of birthday party for Shadi Farar, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy who spent three years in an Israeli jail on charges of intent to murder, [...]