Based on this meeting, the journalism professor and I came away with the same impression: NPR has an institutional commitment to advocacy reporting against Israel. They are complacent about their editorial staff, guidelines and professional quality control. I don't believe anything will change there until they lose so much funding in protest that they are forced to make changes in their staff in order to survive.

Loren Jenkins, NPR Foreign Editor who oversees coverage of the Middle East, is on record calling Jews colonizers--which is the same as saying Israel has no right to exist. When a media watch group confronted him with NPR's knowingly misrepresenting facts, he defended NPR's lack of objective reporting by saying, "Let's face it. The Jews are colonizers. They're colonizing there."(7/14/98) He has also made the same statement in print. NPR will never improve with true believers like Jenkins directing their news coverage.

A few details from the November 15 meeting:

We asked that the same language guidelines for the use of "terrorist" be used in Israel coverage as in covering the U.S. or Ireland. Dvorkin replied that we (Jews) "wanted the story to be covered our way."

Bussey: "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

Dvorkin: "We (NPR) can't use the word terrorist because some people complain we should use the word terrorist to apply to Israel."

Jane Christo admitted that "language should be fair and just, not an issue of what turns people off," but she said this to refute us.

They denied the validity of the requests of many Jewish listeners that use of terrorist be the generally accepted one, of people killing civilians in order to terrorize the population for political ends.

We asked that they remove editorial comment from fact-based stories. The journalist professor really pushed them on this, saying that it was journalism 101, and she would give NPR's performance a "C." Jeff Dvorkin accepted the examples we gave as valid (for example, a reporter characterizing a statement by Sharon to President Bush as "snide and sarcastic" in her news report).Yet he concluded with the blanket assertion that NPR reporters do not mix in their opinion on news stories, and that NPR "does not see a problem in reporters making judgments."

We asked for corrections of mistakes. (Notorious recent NPR "mistake"--NPR reported that the Israeli military had tortured a Palestinian man--burned and cut off his limbs. The man was, in fact, injured in a car accident and paraded to reporters by Palestinians as a victim of Israeli torture. Other media outlets had originally reported the story as "alleged" and did the follow- up that it wasn't true. NPR reported it as fact, and refused to correct it).

Answer: Mistakes are corrected on their web page.

I made a long, detailed, and impassioned plea that they cover institutionalized Palestinian antisemitism: the PA education in hate and antisemitism in their schools, TV, summer camp, sermons. Also that NPR not collude in the PA coercing children to be sent out to riot and be injured for photo-ops, and instead cover that abuse of children as the story. I received four answers:

Jane Christo: "It is not valid to criticize us on what we don't cover."

Jeff Dvorkin: "It's not true." He was referring to the widely reported, well documented fact that Palestinian official maps and their new textbook maps do not show Israel.

The journalism professor asked him his sources, and he said Linda Gradstein had asked the Palestinian Minister of Education! She asked him if Gradstein had a second source, and he said no.

Dvorkin also said, "We've covered that" (meaning the whole issue of institutionalized antisemitism and incitement to violence).

In the years since Oslo, NPR has run one brief (782 word) story on PA incitement (none on their antisemitic teaching), on March 26, 2001, under the headline, "No Sign of Let-up to Violence in Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip."

NPR has an institutional commitment to advocacy reporting against Israel.

I told Dvorkin that institutionalized antisemitism and incitement to violence was a key, major part of the entire story that should be covered regularly, weekly. The answer came from George Busey: "If an imam preaches hate every week, there's no story," i.e. Arab antisemitism and incitement to murder is not news, because it happens constantly, and NPR refuses to mention it.

We asked that they stop blacklisting Steven Emerson--the most prominent American expert on Moslem terror networks in America, who appears regularly before Congress, who briefed President Bush after Sept 11, and is interviewed on the mainstream TV networks.

In 1998, a letter from NPR to an Arab-American activist was leaked, in which NPR apologized for interviewing Emerson after they'd promised not to, and assured him it was NPR policy not to use Emerson. Dvorkin claimed he'd "love to put Emerson on," but won't because "he's such a flashpoint"(meaning, the very terrorist-supporting groups Emerson exposes have complained!).

Karin McQuillan is author of the Jazz Jasper mysteries, combining stories of wildlife with the mystery genre.

December 2001               - 11 -               Outpost