Terrorist savagery against Israeli civilians, often in the form of suicidal, bomb-strapped Palestinians, has yet to elicit from most journalists and major media anything close to honest coverage of the true causes of the onslaught. Instead, vacuous explanations, ones that essentially repeat Arab arguments, prevail.
Yet another two-month study reveals National Public Radio coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict continues to be marred by factual distortions and disproportionate presentation of Arab and pro-Arab speakers. Skewed and serious allegations against Israel are, at times, aired in completely one-sided programs without giving Israel the right of response. Partisan language shades reporting, blurring the terrorist role of Palestinian groups and leaders and casting Israeli leaders alone as “hard-line.”
Syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer is a sorry reminder that when shoddy journalists are given a pass by lax editors, they go on and on producing error-filled commentary. Geyer writes often, even obsessively, about Israel and its supporters, and her columns are frequently marred by factual gaffes, distortion and at times reckless reliance on bogus sources.
In the last terrible days of March 2002, National Public Radio continued its long pattern of sharply underreporting and depersonalizing violence against the people of that nation while emphasizing the feelings, perspectives and accusations of the Palestinians.
The saga of another Jennings error in reporting on Israel, followed by the network's outlandish rationalizations and its eventual, slippery correction, captures exactly the ethos of a media outlet that barely pretends to disguise its advocacy of the Palestinian cause.
In their navigating the complex lexicon of Middle East terminology --some of it loaded, some non-leading and neutral -- journalists may easily run into verbal landmines
