From: Ali Abunimah
August 9, 2001
Dear NPR News,
There can be no doubt that the bomb attack that killed 14 Israelis in Jerusalem today is a horrifying and harrowing event that has destroyed the lives of many innocent people. Linda Gradstein described the scene in intricate detail on All Things Considered this afternoon:
GRADSTEIN: The Palestinian bomber struck at 2 pm, blowing himself up in a Sbarro pizza restaurant in the center of downtown Jerusalem.
Gradstein then played actuality of a 19-year old Israeli soldier called Shaul Ezrahi, who described the horrifying scene, and how he helped two injured children get medical help. Then Gradstein continued:
GRADSTEIN: The restaurant was packed with families eating lunch during summer vacation. Some of the injured were young children, and witnesses said at least one of the dead was an infant killed while sitting in a stroller. After the explosion dozens of people lay on the ground. Those who could walk wandered around dazed as ambulances rushed to the scene. The two-storey restaurant was gutted. Shattered glass covered the street in a one hundred yard radius. Outside, ultra-Orthodox volunteers scraped pieces of flesh off two baby carriages. Jewish law says all parts of a body must be buried. Inside, the first floor was a shambles with tables over-turned, walls blackened and bloodstains on the floor. A police spokesman said the bomb was packed with screws and nails to do as much damage as possible. (END OF EXCERPT)
Except for a few details, that would have been a very good description of the horrifying scene which occurred a week ago in Nablus, when Israel attacked a building in the middle of a civilian neighborhood, killing eight people, including two children, and injuring many others. I was not there--but I did watch unedited footage of the Israeli attack in Nablus, as I did of this morning's bomb attack in Jerusalem on the Al-Jazira satellite channel. The panic, the screaming, the ambulances, the dead bodies, the cries of human anguish were all recognizable, all the same.
But what did Linda Gradstein report, of that attack? This is everything she said on All Things Considered for July 31:
GRADSTEIN: The missiles flew into the third-floor windows of the Hamas office in downtown Nablus, completely demolishing it. The two children were
standing outside the building and were killed by shrapnel. (END EXCERPT)
Notice the difference between the two reports? Today's report is full of harrowing, humanizing detail, while the July 31 report on Nablus is clinical and short. Where for example is the technical description of an Israeli missile? What kind of explosives do they contain? Is an Israeli missile designed to do "maximum damage" as well? What does a house, a building, a refugee camp look like after Israel has attacked it? Gradstein did not say.
After her brief, clinical description of the Nablus attack on July 31, Gradstein quoted a Palestinian spokeswomen condemning the Israeli attack, noted that Palestinians were demanding revenge and then moved on to interviews with Israeli spokesman Dani Ayalon, and analyst Chemi Shalev. You would expect then that we might have heard from Palestinian commentators after the events today. We didn't. Why is it that when Palestinians are brutally attacked and killed by Israel, Israelis get to analyze it for us, and when Israelis are brutally killed by Palestinians...Israelis get to analyze it for us?
Of course the reason Gradstein was able to give such a detailed picture of human suffering in west Jerusalem today is because she is right there. The attack happened near her homes, and disrupted her life. Gradstein didn't even go to Nablus, let alone describe the scene first-hand. This points up a serious structural flaw in NPR's reporting: you have two reporters permanently stationed in the region, both of them in now Israeli west Jerusalem. If you stationed one in the occupied territories, there would be more symmetry to say the least.
Sincerely,
Ali Abunimah
August 10, 2001
On August 9 I sent a letter to National Public Radio contrasting a report they broadcast that day on the bombing in Jerusalem which killed 14 Israelis, with a report on July 31 about an Israeli missile attack on Nablus which killed eight Palestinians. Both of these reports were by Linda Gradstein (see above).
The letter demonstrated that the August 9 report contained detailed descriptions of the horrifying scene in the immediate aftermath of the Jerusalem bombing, while the July 31 report contained only a bare description of the attack on Palestinians without any of the humanizing detail.
In response to this letter, an editor at NPR wrote to me that my criticism was unfair because "The Nablus bombing was reported onscene, in depth, by
Peter Kenyon whom we sent there instead of Linda [Gradstein]."
In fact NPR did send Peter Kenyon to Nablus. His report was broadcast on All Things Considered on August 1. The report featured the mass funeral for the victims of the Israeli attack, and Kenyon walked through the rubble of the devastated building and described what he saw. I should have acknowledged this report in my original letter to NPR, and to this extent I accept that my letter was unfair to NPR.
I maintain, however, my original criticism. I believe there is a difference between a walk through the rubble the next day, and the kind of immediate on scene reporting that Gradstein provided about the Jerusalem bombing. Over the years, NPR has been able to consistently report on violence affecting Israelis as it happens, with raw, humanizing immediacy, for the simple reason that both of its permanent reporters are stationed in Israel and therefore very close to the events. In practical terms, NPR's reporters live as Israelis.
Events in the occupied territories, by contrast, are often reported after the fact, or at a distance. This makes it much harder to convey the day to day human reality of living under military occupation and daily bombardment. This structural imbalance in NPR's reporting is reflected time and again in its reports. It could be remedied if NPR stationed one of its reporters in Israel and one in the occupied territories, either in the West Bank or Gaza or even in occupied east Jerusalem.
To be fair, all U.S. and most foreign media operations station their reporters on the Israeli side of the line, and so in this regard NPR is typical. Since NPR claims that it works according to the highest possible standards, however, it is not unreasonable to expect it to set an example rather than to follow the pack.
Ali Abunimah
To: atc@npr.org
Subject: A Tale of Two Attacks, and Reports
http://www.abunimah.org
NPR Responds to Criticism:
http://www.abunimah.org
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