UPDATE 2
NPR’s ombudsman has responded to HonestReporting readers’ complaints. See what she had to say here.
UPDATE
NPR has clearly recognized that there was a serious problem with its report and has issued the following clarification:
* * *
NPR‘s Emily Harris should be feeling embarrassed. Her failure to challenge the statements of Palestinian interviewees has left her with egg on her face.
In Harris’s report for the October 13 edition of All Things Considered, she interviews Qassam Badran, the father of Ishaq Badran, a Palestinian teenage terrorist shot dead after stabbing and wounding two Israelis in Jerusalem. Harris asks Qassam what motivated his son to carry out the attack:
BADRAN: (Through interpreter) The video that bothered him most was of a woman who was stripped of her headscarf before she was killed in the Old City. He showed it to his mom, saying, look at those cowardly Jews; look what they’re doing to our women.
Badran was referring to a video of Shoruq Dwayat, a Palestinian woman who stabbed an Israeli Jew. The wounded victim managed to shoot Dwayat. Palestinian social media has spread the unsubstantiated rumor that Israeli settlers removed Dwayat’s headscarf.
Leaving unchallenged Badran’s claim that Dwayat had been killed by Israelis, Harris only seconds later says:
I also visited the home of the family of the girl in the video that made Ishaq upset. Shoruq Dwayat is injured and in Israeli custody.
That’s correct – Shoruq Dwayat is alive as confirmed by her family in the NPR report.
Does Harris even realize how utterly ridiculous she looks? Harris failed to fact-check and left her professionalism somewhere else entirely.
But that’s not all.
TURNING THE TERRORISTS INTO THE VICTIMS
Israelis are confronting escalating Palestinian violence. You wouldn’t know it from NPR’s headline accompanying Harris’s report.
In the Orwellian world of NPR, Palestinians are the ones faced with an Israeli onslaught. The Palestinian victim-hood is evident in Harris’s interview with Badran:
HARRIS: Today his father, Qassam Badran, went to the street where his son was killed to ask shopkeepers what they saw. He believes his son was being harassed by Israelis, picked up a knife from a juice stand, used it somehow and was shot. Qassam Badran said his son studied at a good technical school, loved to swim but had been watching a lot of TV and videos about the recent rise in violence in Jerusalem.
NPR not only deliberately humanizes a terrorist but even promotes the denial of the perpetrator’s father. Is it remotely feasible that Ishaq Badran simply “picked up a knife from a juice stand, used it somehow and was shot” by Israelis who had harassed him?
That Harris continuously states that “police say” before every description of a Palestinian terror attack adds to the impression that perhaps Israel has something to hide.
Palestinian incitement and misinformation is being aided and abetted by foreign journalists. Had a Palestinian interviewee claimed the Earth is flat, Harris would probably still have treated him or her as a credible interviewee.
By not challenging Palestinian assertions, Emily Harris has muddied the waters.
NPR has provided a platform for unchallenged Palestinian distortions of reality.
[sc:graybox ]Send your complaint to NPR’s Ombudsman. Click on “Contact the Ombudsman,” select “All Things Considered” in the drop-down menu and send your complaint remembering to include this link to the broadcast – http://www.npr.org/2015/10/13/448379049/palestinians-confront-escalating-violence-in-jerusalem-after-attacks
