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National Public Radio's (NPR) Pro-Israeli Bias - by Stephen Lendman
Since established in 1970, NPR ignored its public trust in favor of privilege, corporatism, militarism, imperial wars, and Israel's vilest crimes, including collective punishment, illegal occupation, targeted killings, land theft, dispossessions, home demolitions, crop destruction, mass incarcerations, torture, violence, and the 2008 - 09 Gaza war inflicting mass deaths, permanent injuries, vast devastation, and human misery against defenseless civilians, imprisoned under siege since June 2007, and afflicted by a dire humanitarian crisis as a result - exacerbated by conflict and intermittent attacks, issues NPR ignores or understates.
It's notorious for its biased, shoddy reporting, pseudo-journalism, creeping commercialism, distracting non-news, and deceiving listeners it's public, non-profit, and impartial. Savvy media consumers know better and tune them out for delivering the same slanted coverage found on major networks and in broadsheets like The New York Times, Washington Post, and others - grossly favoring power, and when it comes to Israel it's interests matter. Palestinian ones don't, so news is carefully filtered to distort facts, and report lies that when repeated enough become truths.
In its May/June 2004 issue, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) asked "How Public Is Public Radio?" in examining its guest list choices - on all issues (including Israel), mostly government officials, corporate think tank representatives, professionals representing their interests, and other elite sources, the public comprising a tiny 7%.
"For a public radio service intended to provide an independent alternative to corporate-owned and commercially driven mainstream media," it said, "NPR is surprisingly reliant on mainstream" sources, the public nearly entirely shut out, and when included they're largely nameless "people in the street," quoted in one-sentence sound bites with no impact.
In December 2001, FAIR's Seth Ackerman discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "Illusion of Balance" along with a companion November/December 2001 "Study of NPR's Coverage of Deaths in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict."
It found an 81% likelihood that an Israeli death would be reported compared to 34% for a Palestinian. Among under age 18 Palestinians, only 20% were reported compared to 89% of Israelis, FAIR concluding that "being a minor makes your death more newsworthy to NPR if you are Israeli, but less" so, or not at all, if Palestinian.
The imbalance is far greater today with few if any Israeli deaths, many Palestinian ones, but few ever reported and when done, it's dismissive, brief, and/or falsified as to the cause.
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