Jennings' bias against Israel is well documented. It is reflected, first, in the amount of time given to each part of his news report. His broadcast of March 31, 2002, for example, mentioned a suicide bombing in a Haifa restaurant, with the consequent death of Jews and Arabs dining there. The report lasted for a few seconds and then went on to a long description of the suffering of the Palestinian people. In the same report, he went on to discuss the activities of groups of human rights activists without any indication that these same activists (who were members of The International Solidarity Movement) have invariably justified Palestinian terror against Israelis and Jews and never once addressed the human rights abuses of Arabs against Arabs. They, the activists, may be free to follow their political agenda, but Peter Jennings and his program, "World News Tonight"-of which he is senior editor-are not free to load the dice in presenting the story to the American public which trusts them. Not if one believes in honest, fair and balanced journalism.
His and the program's bias is also reflected in deliberate misrepresentation. Jennings' description of the murder of two international observers (from the Temporary International Presence in Hebron) that same month (broadcast on March 26, 2002) reported that "Israelis and Palestinians are blaming each other for the first killing of an observer since the force was created eight years ago." This claim was broadcast despite the fact that the murder was done-and seen to be done by the one observer (a Turk) who survived the ambush-by a uniformed member of the Palestinian militia. This was not a mistake by Peter Jennings; it was a spin.
In addition to bias, Jennings also engages in old-fashioned sloppy journalism. Jennings' reports from Israel have too often been marred by errors of fact, evidence that he just doesn't care to get it right when dealing with Israel. Sometimes the correction comes sooner, as when he (mis-) identified Kefar Saba as a city in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory (April 24, 2003), which it definitely is not. He corrected it the next night.
Sometimes the correction comes later. On March 20, 2002, Jennings reported on the victims of a terrorist attack on a bus traveling from Tel Aviv to Nazareth, stating, "seven people died, most of them Israeli Arabs." But none of the dead were Arabs; all were Jews. Jennings and the network, apparently believing dead Arabs as deserving of greater sympathy than dead Jews, did not issue clarification until after more than 1,000 calls of protest. They corrected themselves on May 21.
The spin gets worse: Jennings, in his correction on that date, said, "…This was based on all the initial reporting on the scene. It turns out that those who died were Jews. Most of the passengers on the bus and most of the wounded were Arabs." But even this short correction was wrong, and Jennings was again inventing. "All the initial reporting" certainly did not support this claim; not one single network report from that date has been found to substantiate his words. His claim was dead wrong and malicious to boot.
Sometimes Jennings' broadcast simply omits deadly attacks on Israelis. On Feb. 14, 2001, a Palestinian terrorist attack on Israelis waiting at a roadside bus stop killed seven, five of whom were women soldiers. There was no report of this at all on the "World News Tonight" and no coverage of the funerals. That attack was the single most deadly strike against Israelis in the four years previous to it, and every major network covered it in their evening news programs except for Peter Jennings and ABC.
Sometimes Jennings includes immediate damage control for the Palestinians in the report itself. In May, 2001, two young Israeli boys were murdered while on a walk near their home at biblical Tekoa. Their heads were smashed in with rocks and their blood was smeared on the walls of the cave in which they were trapped. The entire coverage Jennings gave to the murders of Koby Mandel and Yossi Ishran (May 9) was: "At a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, there were funerals held for two Israeli teenagers. They had skipped school and gone for a hike. Their badly beaten bodies had been found in a cave near Bethlehem. The Israeli government says Palestinian terrorists were responsible. Since last September, six Israelis under the age of 18 have been killed and 143 young Palestinians have died."
It was important in this context for the senior editor of "The World News Tonight" and the ABC Network to remind its viewers that many more Palestinian young people have been killed than Israelis. Although this statement is correct, it completely ignores the difference between murderers and victims, between those killed intentionally and those killed accidentally, and ignoring in this context any reference to the murder of other under-18 Israeli youth (of whom there were a lot then and there are many more now) and the circumstances of their murder. Lopsided is the most charitable explanation I can find for this coverage. Biased is closer to the truth.
This list could go on. But I fear to try the patience of our readers (it's probably too late already!) by continuing this long report. In any case, these are only isolated examples of a much broader trend. The evidence is well documented, in public view, well known to anyone who is interested (the CAMERA organization operates a Web site devoted to media coverage of the Middle East), and not dependent on who I am or who he is. Facts are facts and these citations are accurate. This man is not an honest journalist and his program is not an honest program.
I am, of course, at a complete loss to understand how Amherst College, of all places, decided to award Peter Jennings an honorary degree. Good faith and honesty, illuminating the world-all the things we were supposed to have absorbed in four years at Amherst-require that this honor be rescinded at once. I call upon the college to do so without delay.