THE NPR ombudsman responded to my column of Nov. 13, Why I will never give a penny to NPR, with a blog posting entitled, What the rabbi heard or thought he heard.
Over the course of a telephone conversation and email exchanges, NPRs ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, provided a transcript of the NPR report on the Ft. Hood massacre and showed me that I had not quoted reporter Tom Gjelten precisely. I apologized to her for that.
I thought Shepard would apolo- gize for NPRs own, far more serious, substantive bias in Gjeltens reporting. I was wrong. Unlike NPR, which extracted a mere snippet from my column and did not provide a link to it, I provide the full transcript of the NPR ombudsmans defense of Gjelten (see below). I also quote extensively from Gjelten’s own words. I provide the readers with the basis to decide.
I am puzzled by Gjeltens silence.
Why would Shepard defend him without giving any indication that she even spoke to him about what he meant? Why cant he speak for himself?
THIS all began when I received an email from Alicia Shepard, concerned about my column and inviting me to call her, which I did.
The telephone conversation was enlightening.
It gave me an opportunity to explain why I wrote in white heat against a report on the Ft. Hood massacre by NPRs Gjelten. I did so because, to me, it was the straw that broke the camels back. I saw Gjeltens Ft. Hood report as part of a pervasive NPR bias in its reporting on terrorism, including Palestinian terrorism.
In the case of the Ft. Hood report, I identified NPRs bias as Gjeltens denial of any role of Islam in the mind of the killer before the facts were known.
Shepard initially asked me whether I listen to NPR with any frequency. What I heard in her repetition of that question in different ways was, although she did not say it, that I was just a casual listener who heard one report and flew off the handle. In fact, I listen to NPR at least twice a day, at least five days a week, and have done so for years. I am very familiar with its mode of reporting on terrorism and on the Middle East.
She then informed me of the availability of transcripts of NPR reports.
She told me that I had misquoted Gjelten in a way that changed his meaning.
I did not believe I had changed his meaning, but told her I was prepared to stand corrected if I had, and asked her to supply me with the transcript.
SHEPARDS effort to convince me that I had changed Gjeltens meaning allowed for an exchange on matters of substance during our phone call.
I told her that I thought that NPR equated the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the conflict; that, for example, to NPR the burning down of an olive grove by Israeli settlers, which I abhor, and the burning down of human beings by Palestinian terrorists, were equal. I reject and resent NPRs moral equivalence, and regard it as bad journalism.
By way of defense, she said that, to many of NPRs Palestinian critics, NPR is a but a mouthpiece (or some such term) for Israel. In other words, I am just another biased critic myself, only on the opposite side of the Palestinian spectrum.
I responded to this effect. Thats right: The Palestinian critics say of NPR that its a mouthpiece for Israel because large segments of the Palestinian populace demonstrate no capacity for self-reflection and self-critique which itself is an important issue that NPR should cover.
Shepard was silent on this.
She repeatedly focused on my distortion of Tom Gjeltens report. However, I reminded her that my column cited not one, but three specific criticisms of NPR. She ignored two: First, that NPR will not call a terrorist a terrorist; for example, will not call a person who fires a rocket into a hotel a terrorist, but merely a militant.
Second, that NPRs report on Ft. Hood referred to the alleged shooting there.
On the first point, Shepard conceded that the word terrorist bedevils NPR coverage, and named a num- ber of countries. However, an explanation of why a person who fires a rocket into a hotel is not termed a terrorist by NPR was not forthcoming. Nor did Shepard address the issue in her subsequent blog posting.
Her blog post did concede that Gjeltens use of the word alleged before the word shooting was awkward at best.
But mostly, on the phone, Shepard maintained that NPR, as a professional news organization, must keep away from bias, and that Gjeltens report was not biased against regarding Islam as a possible explanation of the Ft. Hood shooters murder spree.
I said that I too was part of a professional news organization, which is not too coy to admit it has biases, but strives mightily to keep them out of its news columns and to limit them to opinion columns; unlike NPR, which maintains it has no bias. Of course, at least since Freud, we know that everyone has a bias, conscious or unconscious. He who confronts his own bias has the far better chance of being dispassionate in scholarship and in journalistic reportage. NPR ombudsman Shepard would not admit that NPR has any bias. In my view, thats why
NPR cant keep bias out of its news reportage on terrorism.
It comes down to this: Was Gjeltens report biased?
GJELTEN described Ft. Hoods alleged killer as being a devout Muslim, then saying (as I heard it): Not that that, of course, can be relevant to this case.
In fact, Gjelten said, according to the transcript, We cant say, of course, that that was relevant here.
I apologize for not characterizing my restatement of Gjelten as a paraphrase.
Do you see a difference, in meaning, between my sentence and Gjeltens? The NPR ombudsman does.
She writes on her blog that my sentence distorts Gjeltens words, distorts the facts, and conveys a substantially different meaning . . . from Gjeltens words.
Gjelten was correct to say that it wasnt known at that moment in time if Hasans religion was relevant, wrote Shepard in her blog post.
I can see how Shepard would interpret Gjeltens words as she did and respect her perspective. I heard Gjelten differently for two reasons: first, unclarity; second, context.
First, I do not see a phrase or sentence in Gjeltens words indicating that his report about the irrelevance of Hasans religion was due to Gjeltens lack of knowledge at that moment in time.
Second, Gjelten went on to do exactly what Shepard said he didnt do. Later in his report, Gjelten speculated on what wasnt known at that moment in time. He speculated that traumatic stress syndrome might have driven Hasan to kill people. I have trouble accepting Shepards reading of Gjeltens we cant say, of course, that that [Islam] was relevant here when he goes on to speculate at some length about what was relevant.
Gjelten was in speculation mode.
I heard him saying: I speculate that Islam is irrelevant, and that traumatic stress syndrome is relevant (on which more below). I accorded Gjelten the courtesy of consistency in context his own context.
Here is Gjeltens first major segment:
[STEVE] INSPKEEP: Who is he?
GJELTEN: Nidal Hasan was born in the Washington, D.C. area in Arlington. His parents were Palestinian emmigrants [sic], it seems.
He went to local schools, graduating from Virginia Tech, joined the Army. He spent basically his whole adult life in the Army. Thats where he received his medical education.
He was trained as a psychiatrist by the Army and served for several years at Walter Reed Army Med-ical Center, ironically specializing in the treatment of combat stress.
He was then transferred to Fort Hood earlier this year. He was due to be deployed, apparently to Afghanistan. Weve heard from various sources that that bothered him, for whatever reason. We know he was a devout Muslim, took his faith very seriously. We cant say, of course, that that was relevant here [emphasis added].
NPR ombudsman tells us that what Gjelten meant was that he did not know at that moment in time whether Hasans religion was relevant. I did not hear it that way, and I find that Gjeltens later segment confirms that he was speculating on Hasans motives that what he meant was that Islam was not relevant to the shooting.
In print journalism, we have a phrase for last minute uncertainties, As of press time. If Gelten did not use a similarly clear qualifier, it is likely because he was, in fact, speculating.
IF you dont think that picking apart a transcript of a radio report after the fact is a good methodology, I agree. What counts is how the report sounded. Its something of a mixed metaphor to subject a tran- script of an oral report to a literary analysis. A transcript cannot capture tone and emphasis. Its hard to figure out why Jonathan Edwards had a reputation as a powerful preacher (the Great Awakening) on the basis of his sermons as they have come down to us in written form. They appear dry and ponderous. Apparently, when heard, they were anything but.
Listen to Gjeltens report in its entirety. I believe it will show that Gjeltens meaning and bias are perfectly clear.
Right there in that report, only 12 hours after the fact, at that moment in time, Gjelten speculated on motive. I quote Gjelten:
You [co-reporter Steve Inskeep] referred to the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. There almost seems to be a phenomenon that you could maybe call a pre-traumatic stress disorder. . . . Interestingly enough, as many soldiers have killed themselves before they were due to be deployed as after. . . . So there seems to be an issue here of expectation of what you are getting into. And the fact that Major Hasan wouldve known better than others, even about how traumatic combat experience would be, you know, raises the question of, you know, was he an example of these soldiers who are literally freaked out by what they are likely to face when they are deployed?
Gjelten felt free to speculate about a disorder as a cause of the murder spree. To my knowledge, pre-traumatic stress disorder has never even been heard of before. Yet, on that as yet non-diagnosed disorder as a cause of mass murder, Gjelten felt free to speculate, at that moment in time.
It is reasonable to say, as I did, upon hearing Gjeltens earlier words, that he felt free to speculate at that moment in time that Islam played no role in the murder spree.
This captures NPRs bias: Islam does not drive people who commit the vast majority of terrorist acts around the world.
