ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings did not cover the Feb. 14, 2001 bus attack at Azur Junction, in which a Palestinian bus driver rammed his bus into a crowd waiting at a bus stop, killing eight young Israelis and injuring some 20 others. Wednesday’s attack was the single most deadly strike against Israelis in the last four years, and every major network covered it in their evening news programs except for ABC.
While anchorman Jennings apparently did not feel that this deadly strike in the heart of Israel was newsworthy, he did allocate time to report on the sex life of slime molds and the weddings of nude American couples. World News Tonight also presented an in-depth report on the nation’s aging infrastructure, a feature topic not of a time-sensitive nature which could have been held or shortened in order to give space to the latest dramatic and tragic developments in the Middle East conflict.
Peter Jennings’ coverage has long been marred by a minimizing of Palestinian assaults on Jews and a distorted emphasis on Arab grievances. The total omission of the bus attack is a particularly stark example of the anchorman’s bias. The network can redress the egregious oversight by airing a feature story on the tragic deaths of Julie Viener, Jasmin Karisi, Kochava Polanski, Rahel Levy, Alexander Manevich, Simcha Shitreet, Ofir Magidish and David Elouz.
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