JustASC

WQXR, the classical station of the New York Times, rejects a paid commentary on Sderot by American Jewish Committee’s David Harris.

Pathetic explanation by Tom Bartunek, president of New York Times Radio and general manager of WQXR:

“In my judgement several elements of this spot are outside our bounds of acceptability. First, the opening line- `Imagine you had fifteen seconds to find shelter from an oncoming missile’-does not make clear that the potential target of the missile is not our listening area, and as a consequence, runs the risk of raising anxiety in a misleading way. Second, the description of the missiles as arriving `day or night’ and `daily’ is also subject to challenge as being misleading, at least to the degree that reasonable people might be troubled by the absence of any acknowledgement of reciprocal Israeli military actions. Finally, in my judgement the `countdown’ device and the general tone of the message do not meet our guidelines for decorum.”

Harris nails the illogic:

Stunning, above all, is the reference to “the absence of any acknowledgement of reciprocal Israeli military actions.”

In other words, according to Bartunek’s logic, the only way to broadcast the plight of Sderot’s residents over the airwaves is to equate Israel’s right of self-defense with Hamas’s and Islamic Jihad’s right to strike Israel at will.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 9:09 am and is filed under JustASC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.