Kesher Talk

More on Ashleigh Banfield, MSNBC "reporter": I received correspondence yesterday from a Kesher Talk reader whose name has been withheld. He saw my last post yesterday criticizing Banfield:

I was shocked last month when Ashleigh Banfield was responding on the air to criticism of her interviewing hooded member of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. She read on the air two viewers' objections to her essentially uncritical interviews and ostensible attempts at humanizing terrorists over a two or three day period. Her shrill and condescending response was something to the effect that Israeli soldiers had killed innocent Palestinians too and so her form of reporting of Hamas was thus justified. She strongly implied that Jewish soldiers were murderers and were somehow being humanized themselves through interviews of them. I was flabbergasted at her non sequiturs and thoughtless moral equivalency. I was suprised to see no reporting or comments by bloggers about it.

...I have also watched Banfield occasionally interview Israeli and Palestinian spokesmen in tandem over the past three months. Unfailingly she courteous to the Palestinians, almost always asking open-ended questions and rarely following up. On the other hand, she seems generally abrupt, aggressive and leading in her questioning of Israelis.

posted by Howard @ 6/19/2002 10:56:33 AM