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NPR’s coverage distorts reality, portraying ‘Israeli troops fighting innocent Palestinian civilians, not barbaric terrorists.’
By Rinat Harash,Honest Reporting
If National Public Radio were the sole source of news on the Israel-Hamas war this week, listeners would unlikely be able to accurately describe the Jewish state’s enemy in Gaza or the West Bank.
Rather, they would be under the impression that Israeli troops are fighting against innocent Palestinian civilians, not barbaric terrorists.
NPR has managed to create such a skewed picture of reality by using three tactics: omission, distortion and equivalence.
The omission was blatant, for example, in NPR’s recent coverage of an Israeli army raid that killed three terrorists in a West Bank hospital.
Despite the fact that all three had been claimed as members of terrorist organizations (Hamas and Islamic Jihad), NPR’s headline simply referred to them as “Palestinians:”
Hey, @NPR, you missed a vital word from your headline.
The three Palestinians were terrorists planning an attack while hiding in the hospital.
We've fixed it for you. ⬇️ https://t.co/IzUjVttTGv pic.twitter.com/OHcjivDCMW
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 30, 2024
The story was later updated, but the headline remained the same.
And the distortion is clear from the first paragraph, which still reads as if the terrorists’ affiliation was merely an Israeli accusation (emphasis added):
Israeli military and security forces disguised as civilians and hospital staff raided a hospital in the West Bank city of Jenin early Tuesday morning, killing three Palestinians who they say were militants.
NPR also embedded a video from the outlet’s Instagram account showing CCTV footage of the raid. Sadly, it carries a caption that’s as bad as the headline:
The piece also omits what the IDF Chief of Staff had to say about not letting terrorists hide inside hospitals. His comments were quoted by the wire services, but NPR preferred giving a platform only to Palestinian hospital officials.
Another example of omitting terrorism from the narrative is NPR’s weekly collection of “Photos of life in war.”
True to its headline — “Palestinians flee south in Gaza, Israel mourns dead soldiers” — the gallery only displays pictures of Israeli soldiers and displaced Palestinians.
The soldiers’ photos show troops in combat or at funerals. The Palestinians’ photos display them in damaged houses, refugee tents or body bags.
Where are the Hamas terrorists? Like a tragic version of ‘Where’s Waldo?’, they are nowhere to be found. And that’s exactly the lie that Hamas wants media to spread — that Israeli soldiers are waging a war against unarmed Gazan civilians.
At the very least, media outlets should add a disclaimer to such pieces, saying that Hamas terrorists wear civilian clothes and attack Israeli troops from within civilian neighborhoods — as is apparent from a glance at the videos posted on the terror group’s Telegram channel.
The Perils of Equivalence
NPR has also used the tactic of equivalence to whitewash Israel’s foes, by creating symmetry and erasing differences between the two sides.
A recent piece titled “Israeli and Palestinian radio stations broadcast messages for locked up loved ones,” put Palestinians held on suspicion of terrorism on the same moral level as innocent Israeli civilians:
One of the biggest sources of anguish for Israeli and Palestinian families in nearly four months of the Gaza war is the large number of hostages and prisoners taken by each side.
According to @NPR, "One of the biggest sources of anguish for Israeli & Palestinian families… is the large number of hostages & prisoners taken by each side."
No, NPR, there is no moral equivalence between Israelis kidnapped by Hamas & Palestinians detained by Israel on… pic.twitter.com/V4OFGZT7V7
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 30, 2024
In the same piece, NPR has also subtly compared the Jewish state to Hamas:
For Palestinian and Israeli families, the concern is not knowing about their loved ones in extreme and difficult conditions. Some Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees have died while being held. There are growing allegations of physical abuse against Palestinians in Israeli jails and even sexual abuse against Israelis in Hamas captivity.
When Israeli hostages in Gaza are equated to prisoners charged by a democratic country, it downplays the unparalleled atrocities that have been inflicted on them by Hamas since their abduction on October 7, when the group’s terrorists butchered 1,200 people in southern Israel.
And when the Jewish state is compared to a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction, the boundaries between good and evil are shattered.
Why does NPR try so hard to do that?
Why does it find such elaborate ways to erase the taint of Palestinian terrorism?
Is it so unimaginable that Israelis have a right to defend themselves against such evil?
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