Here’s a real head-scratcher for you. The radical student lefties who wouldn’t trust The New York Times as a source to wipe a window, still see the paper publish a favorable outlook on the pro-Hamas network, Al Jazeera. It’s like a cat vouching for a mouse.
A reporter for the Times, Santul Nerkar, recently penned a love-letter of an article praising the Qatar-funded news source. And, boy, did he dance around those pesky labels, such as “leftist” and “radical.” Instead, Nerkar flavoured his article with the more palatable term, “pro-Palestinian.”
He writes about Nick Wilson, a Cornell student, who’s apparently obsessed with the Gaza conflict. But, Wilson, like many left-leaning academics, turns up his nose at American media coverage of Israel’s actions. In an ironic twist reminiscent of a bad sitcom, Nerkar’s own media outlet, which has been known to deride conservative readers for mistrusting mainstream media, comes to Wilson’s aid in his story. You can’t make this stuff up.
But it doesn’t stop there. Wilson and his band of protesters are keen on getting the gritty details straight from Gaza and, in Nerkar’s eyes, there’s no better outlet for this than Al Jazeera. Regardless of Israel banning the operations of the network, American students continue to hold it in high regard – elevating it even further like some kind of journalistic martyr.
This risk-taking approach from Al Jazeera wins points with the students, who applaud the two journalists who lost their lives reporting from Gaza. However, Nerkar conveniently forgot to include in his glowing report the headlining news of Al Jazeera’s pro-terrorist sympathy like holding a birthday bash to celebrate the release of a terrorist convicted of a horrific crime in Israel. What’s more, he omitted to mention Al Jazeera reporters moonlighting as operatives for Hamas.
Despite all this, according to Nerkar, Hamas is just an “armed resistance,” and not the havoc-wreaking machine that has been documented taking lives and holding hostages. Now, that’s what I call fake news.
Furthermore, critics pointing out that Al Jazeera’s broadcasts lean towards Hamas are being dismissed by the network as baseless. The pot is even stirred more with the claim that the network practices balanced reporting, including Israeli press briefings amongst its Hamas videos.
Towards the end of his article, Nerkar reluctantly admits to the truth when quoting scholar Hussein Ibish’s claim that the network’s staunchly anti-American stance resonates with today’s American college kids who advocate anti-imperial views.
This story, folks, is just another episode in the long-running saga of American media’s love affair with the radical left. It’s a stunning example of the media’s active promotion of biased viewpoints, blatant hypocrisy, and the dismissal of any criticism from the right. It seems, for people like Nerkar and his colleagues at the Times, pro-left and anti-right has become a journalistic mantra. Problem is, the joke’s on them; as the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
