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May 20, 2005/Iyar 11 5765, Volume 57, No. 38
NPR may be monitored on Mideast news
CHANAN TIGAY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - Word that the head of the federal corporation overseeing public radio and television is mulling a proposal to begin monitoring National Public Radio's coverage of the Middle East for bias is being met with cautious optimism by Jewish officials and U.S. legislators.
"This is something we've been calling on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to do for years," said Alex Safian, associate director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, a media watchdog group. "It's potentially a move in the right direction, depending on what kind of analysis the Corporation for Public Broadcasting does."
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) recommended the move to monitor NPR's Mideast reportage when the corporation met in Washington last fall. At the time, he told JTA on May 16, he suggested that about $50,000 be earmarked for a study of NPR's Mideast coverage.
Long criticized by some as reflexively anti-Israel, NPR ought to be striving for a balance in its Mideast coverage where "half the story's comments are favorable to the Israeli government and half are opposed," Sherman said.
A spokesman for the corporation told JTA that "no one was available" to comment on the NPR situation.
The spokesman did make available a small portion of congressional testimony about polls on perceptions of public broadcasting, including Middle East coverage that the corporation had commissioned over the past few years.
Most recently, according to the corporation's testimony, its polling data demonstrated that nearly 80 percent of people who listen to public radio believe Middle East coverage is balanced. Eight percent think it has a pro-Israel bias, while 5 percent feel it favors the Arabs.
"Given its polling results, we are surprised that the corporation would be considering additional study on this subject," Andi Sporkin, NPR's vice president of communications, told JTA in an e-mail exchange, referring specifically to surveys conducted for the corporation by two outside firms in 2002 and 2003.
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