The Brooklyn Rail

Monday, December 30, 2024

Dear NPR,

I want to first and last commend you for being one of the only American news organizations that has hired an actual Palestinian news correspondent. I say “and last” because that’s the end of my commendations.

I want to second and foremost condemn you for your continued omission of historical context in your reports on Gaza—your near-systematic introduction of Gaza-related stories with “since the war began on October 7”—which simultaneously distorts contemporary context by hiding the agency of Israel in this “conflict.” In keeping, when citing the death toll of civilians it’s always appended by a doubt-casting “according to the Gaza health ministry,” while much of the time you leave Israel’s October 7 figure of 1,200 undisputed (even after Israel revised the number from 1,400). I also would like to condemn you for using neutral—by neutral I once again mean language that hides the imbalance of power between actors—language such as “conflict” or even “war.” This very framing is operative even—I say “even” even though this makes it more egregious, in the very titles of your articles, such as your October 7, 2024 anniversary story “1 year after Hamas attacked Israel, the conflict grows more dangerous than ever.”¹

And finally, I condemn you for your gross distortion of the scale of what is happening in Gaza, as well as your distractive pivots away from details which should be the glaring focus of your reportage—over 45,000 Palestinians killed (by Israel)—and towards ones which are inane and shortsightedly self-serving (as was the subject of your story today, which I will now get to), shortsighted because ultimately you are threatening not only the integrity of journalism at large, but the lives of journalists, your own included.

I respond specifically to the December 29, 2024 Weekend Edition Sunday story, “A snapshot of a year spent reporting and living through war, from NPR’s producer in Gaza.” Like many snapshots, this one has a frame, and that frame is war journalism in general, and NPR specifically. Already I find this distasteful. Now here’s the opening from the snapshot—which is actually an interview—conducted by the host, Daniel Estrin.

If you've been following NPR’s reporting on Gaza this year, there’s a name you hear all the time—Anas Baba. He's NPR’s producer in Gaza and one of the only Palestinian journalists working full time there for an American news organization. Israel bars international journalists like me from independent access to Gaza. But Anas Baba lives there.

For starters, it’s truly, bizarrely tone deaf to say “there’s a name you hear all the time” regarding a subject around which 45,000 left-nameless Palestinians have been killed—activist groups have desperately attempted to publicize the very names of these dead in order to overcome the Western media void around these deaths—when here and too often elsewhere you won’t even “name” the number of the dead. The imposed media void strictly means “there’s a name I never hear.” It’s the name of Palestinians. The only one worth naming works for NPR.

Additionally, the uncritical fatalism at work here is a sign of flagrant negligence regarding your work. Consider these facts you have left unconsidered:

1. 1. Nearly no Palestinian journalists work for American news organizations.
   2. Israel bars international journalists (this includes American ones) from “independent”access.
   3. Anas Baba lives there.

Now let’s cross-reference these “facts of life” with the rest of the opening of the transcript:

And for the last fourteen months, he’s been NPR’s microphone in Gaza, covering one of the most devastating wars of this century. It’s one that’s killed more journalists over the course of a single year than any other conflict in the last several decades, as documented by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Anas Baba is here with us now from Gaza to reflect on what he’s seen this past year and what it’s been like covering this war.

Charges of genocide aside—a “naming” that is so contentious—what of the default categorization of this as “war”? This is a dispossessed and now occupied territory being constantly bombarded by its occupier, and journalists are barred by the occupier, Israel, from entry. These are not conditions of war; there is no parity nor symmetry in this. Of the 45,000 Palestinians killed, nearly half are children. This is massacre. If there is salient information to capture in this snapshot, this is it.

“It’s one that’s killed more journalists” implies—and strategically so—that the war has killed these journalists. And yet, by the reckoning of the same Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that this NPR journalist only partially cites—not even naming the number, which is 141—“Palestinian journalists have continued reporting despite killings, injuries, and arbitrary detention at the hands of Israeli forces, none of whom have been held accountable.”² Not even NPR holds Israel accountable here. Indeed, again according to their website, “CPJ has regularly demanded accountability for journalist killings in Gaza as well as unfettered, independent access for media organizations to cover the conflict.” When CPJ cites the barring of “independent” access, they call it what it is: a measure that obstructs journalists and that creates a foundation for killing them. NPR, on the other hand, equates it with the sky being blue (which it is not, in Gaza; it is fuming gray with dust clouds of rubble, orange with rocket flares) and thereby normalizes a humanitarian blight—a stain on the whole world—which dilutes the integrity of journalism and renders journalists unsafe. Journalists like Anas Baba.

You yourselves have acquiesced to the conditions that allow for journalists like Anas Baba to be killed. How will you report on this if Baba dies? “Anas Baba lives there”—how profoundly charged a statement is this? What does “there” mean, in relation to a dispossessed (1948), then occupied (1967), then blockaded (2006)—Gaza became “unlivable” according to the UN in 2018, and was again described as such three months into this “war”—then daily bombarded (2023–current) territory without sovereignty?

I appreciate, and I grieve, that this story shares Baba’s own experience of being displaced seven times in just over one year. And nonetheless the focus of your story is one of your own previous stories; in this case, asking Baba to recall a story from March 8, 2024 about a baker in Gaza making cake; an almost unheard-of phenomenon in such a besieged area. In this present “snapshot” story you play recorded footage of this previous story where you, then, hoped to inspire hope.

And yet, tell me, who did this story of hope serve? Showing us a speck of humanity in a humanitarian catastrophe, is it to convince us that everything will be alright? That the storm will pass? That the earthquake will subside? The very title of that story still contains a typo: “This Gaza bakery is making cakes for Palestinians trying celebrate life amid war.”

So you’ve decided to highlight today in your snapshot a smaller snapshot that still treats war as an inevitable and naturally occurring fact without assignation of blame nor accurate reportage as to who has created the conditions rendering life unlivable and cakes unmakable in Gaza. You highlight in this story the devastation and destruction, yes, but you are careful to give equal weight to both sides: “The Israelis are not allowing that much of aid to enter because they accused Hamas that they are taking it.” This careful balancing act is itself a distortion, leaving out once again the disproportionate uses of force and terror by the Israelis. Is the current destruction of the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza, Kamal Adwan Hospital—doctors such as Hussam Abu Safiya kidnapped by Israeli forces, more patients killed—not worthy of coverage, of naming? The same Committee to Protect Journalists titled an article from November 8—more than a month ago—“‘Catastrophic’: Journalists say ethnic cleansing taking place in a news void in northern Gaza.” Your snapshot leaves void this ongoing systemic brutality, but opts to focus on a story of a cake from nine months ago in March? Did you not learn your lesson in 2009, when you banned use of the word “torture” specifically in the context of Bush’s policies at Guantanamo,³ and yet could apply the term towards other countries? Tell me, whose side did your “We take no sides” stance take?

Your euphemistic language and “restraint” is not a sign of neutrality, it is not a sign of journalistic integrity. Your brand of neutrality is a common brand of distortion and, more than that, governmental complicity. By refusing to call it torture you condone torture and allow its continuation. By refusing to call it genocide you condone genocide and guarantee its continuance. By refusing to hold Israel accountable for its murder of journalists you will be accountable if Anas Baba is killed.

You have committed yourselves to neutral and fair reporting of a world that is neither neutral nor fair, and thereby you are misrepresenting and warping our view of that world. As a Jew myself, I consider you a kind of Sweden during World War II. This is an unacceptable position; neutrality is complicity with the status quo.

Your current mission statement: “to create a more informed public—one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures.” In the 1981 introduction to his own seminal work Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison describes something similar, albeit with greater skepticism while retaining even greater integrity:

Yet I recalled that during the early, more optimistic days of this republic it was assumed that each individual citizen could become (and should prepare to become) President. For democracy was considered not only a collectivity of individuals, as was defined by W.H. Auden, but a collectivity of politically astute citizens who, by virtue of our vaunted system of universal education and our freedom of opportunity, would be prepared to govern. As things turned out it was an unlikely possibility—but not entirely, as is attested by the recent examples of the peanut farmer and the motion-picture actor.

The peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter, died on the day of Weekend Edition Sunday. He was the only US president to openly speak of the plight of Palestinians; he was also the first to light a National Menorah for Chanukkah in 1979. The fact that these two facts cohere in the same man is, I think, an example that obliterates the journalistic ideal of neutrality—neutrality would simply mean that either Carter would decide not to take action expressing respect for different peoples seen (or framed; such as the way Israel conflates antisemitism with pro-Palestine expressions) as ideologically opposed, or that his actions here would not be broadcast at all, which, in keeping, well, I didn’t learn of these things from NPR—and replaces it with a more realistic, and more respectable ideal, one that highlights Carter’s own “deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures.”

What Ellison highlights here is a commitment to a people-based politics and specifically to democracy, the latter being something so fragile that it must be fought for. Ellison does not hope for it—it’s an unlikely possibility that can yet surprise us sometimes, in his case in his present—it’s already a past dream. But as unlikely a possibility as it is, there are things that make it more possible. That’s why I write you this letter, NPR, because it is part of your mission statement to be what you currently aren’t, and as disappointed as I am by you on this day, and on most days, you are nonetheless the best of the worst.

You might contest that your story is a “snapshot,” and as such cannot possibly capture the whole of the situation. I would respond that the majority of your stories are unfortunate and ill-representative snapshots. I would respond that this is my snapshot of your snapshots. Take better snapshots. Your information is accurate and thorough, you know very well what is happening and who is responsible, but your framing is irresponsible and enabling. I’m tired of reading stories titled “Dozens killed from an Israeli strike in a Gaza humanitarian zone, Palestinians say” and “World Central Kitchen workers killed by Israeli airstrike, Gaza health ministry says.” Say it yourself. Your neutrality has only proven that information is not democratic, it only flows in the direction towards which the ruling class directs it. Inform us. Form a president out of someone without a million dollars, out of someone without a million unpaid debts. This is your mission, your self-stated debt.

Sincerely,

Jared Harvey