In Media's Gaza, Rioters "Protest" and "Protesters" Riot - by Ini Gilead

...The perversity of NPR’s language choices was showcased spectacularly by one particular Orwellian sentence describing would-be bombers as protesters: “The army says it killed three protesters who were trying to set a bomb next to the security fence in Rafah,” NPR reported. If only they wanted to buy discounted Nutella instead of bomb Israelis, the reporter might have had fewer misgivings about using accurate language.

Gilead Ini..
CAMERA..
18 May '18..

NPR knows a riot when it sees one.

After French supermarket customers pushed and punched their way to heavily discounted jars of Nutella, the public radio giant described the scene as a “riot.”

In a Morning Edition report out of Kenya, an NPR anchor referred to stone-throwers as rioters. “I’m at a polling station, and it’s surrounded by protesters, by rioters who are throwing rocks at the polling place,” she exclaimed.

And when Pakistani men “smashed police cars and tried to set fire to the local stations,” this, too, was straightforwardly labeled a “riot” by NPR.

Gaza rioter hurling stonesBut in recent weeks, crowds of men hurling stones, throwing firebombs, attacking a border fence, and setting fire to fields and buildings were characterized in a strikingly different way. These men were Palestinians in Gaza. The object of their rage was Israel. And for NPR journalists across the network’s news programs, there seemed to be a policy of avoiding the R word.

“Israeli forces killed at least 60 protesters and injured more than 1,000 on Monday, firing on demonstrators who had massed along its roughly 40-mile border with the Gaza Strip,” NPR’s Colin Dwyer reported, although Hamas later admitted that 50 of the dead were its operatives, “not regular people,” and although Israel noted that the day’s casualties included eight armed Hamas fighters who opened fire on Israeli soldiers while trying to sneak across the border.

The perversity of NPR’s language choices was showcased spectacularly by one particular Orwellian sentence describing would-be bombers as protesters: “The army says it killed three protesters who were trying to set a bomb next to the security fence in Rafah,” NPR reported. If only they wanted to buy discounted Nutella instead of bomb Israelis, the reporter might have had fewer misgivings about using accurate language. (Notwithstanding NPR’s characterization, the army used the word “terrorist,” not protester, to describe those setting the bomb.)

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