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.
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