The relentless focus on Gaza
It's been six months since Hamas attacked Israel and Israel responded with war. Since then, the most frequent complaint we get in the Public Editor inbox is that NPR has downplayed the suffering of Israelis while calling attention to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.
It was also one criticism of many mentioned in a column last week from an NPR editor. It raises a question: Should the news coverage of this war be proportional to the number of civilian deaths and suffering?
The answer is more complex than numerical and journalists who create the news rarely want to talk about it publicly. One NPR executive suggested that answering that question on the record was the equivalent of putting one's head above the parapet; it will definitely get blown off. Instead, he said, most journalists prefer to let the work speak for itself.
In the analysis of this question, there are a few underlying principles:
- The lives of Israelis and Palestinians are equally valuable.
- One story is never the whole story. Individual stories are often a close look at a specific experience or moment.
- Newsrooms have an obligation to capture the wider picture over time, through their larger body of work.
- Journalism is about documentation and accountability.
- Daily journalism is a set of daily choices, informed by both the events of
