From:
NPR corrects itself – to a point
(Mondoweiss) -- by Henry Norr --
Several updates from the National Public Radio front:
• Last week, just a day after I sent a complaint to Fresh Air and NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard about the misleading account of the origins of the siege of Gaza presented by Terry Gross's guest Lawrence Wright, a correction of sorts appeared on the network's corrections page. As several commenters here predicted, the correction is minimal: "Our guest misstated the year of Hamas' election victory. The elections were held in January 2006, not June 2007." (Wright actually just said 2007 - it's not clear why the correction mentions June.)
What's not pointed out, of course, is the real problem with Wright's answer to Gross's question about how and why the blockade began: misdating the election helped him construct a false narrative that presents the siege as Israel's response to a steady stream of challenges from the Palestinians - most notably the capture of soldier Gilad Shalit - rather than collective punishment, beginning before the capture of Shalit, for Hamas's victory in an election universally deemed free and fair.
No one from Fresh Air replied to me directly, but Shepard passed along a response she got from Danny Miller, the program's co-executive producer, apparently after she passed along a copy of my message. In part, it said "we feel that the interview presented a balanced perspective from an informed journalist, who expressed his empathy for the difficulties faced by both the residents of Gaza and of Israel." I suppose that last sentence is Miller's response to my argument that Gaza expert Sara Roy or someone actually living under the siege would been a better source than a journalist who has spent three weeks in Gaza...MORE...LINK
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