CAMERA - The C-SPAN Way: Allow Propagandist Repeat Callers to Drone on and on Unchallenged

MK..
CAMERA/Snapshots..
02 March '12..

Inept call-handling by C-SPAN’s Washington Journal hosts, especially anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-U.S. foreign policy callers, was on display yet again in the Feb. 24, 2012 broadcast in which two repeat callers were allowed monologues of several minutes each.

Host Susan Swain (C-SPAN President and Co-CEO) and guest Russ Feingold (former U.S. Senator, D-Wisc.) fielded calls from repeat phoners “Tyrone from Baton Rouge, Louisiana” and “Mary from Bellbrook, Ohio."

Caller “Tyrone” (click here to listen) unrealistically dismissed the Iranian nuclear threat as mainly pertaining only to Israel (a point challenged by guest Feingold) and falsely asserted that Israel is a drain on the American economy (a point not challenged by either host or guest).

It doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect either the president of C-SPAN or a former U.S. senator to point out that total American foreign aid is a small percentage of the federal budget and a tiny proportion of the gross domestic product. Likewise, the comparatively small amount of the foreign aid budget going to Israel is hardly a drain on the American economy. Most of the approximately $3 billion per year in U.S. aid to Israel is used to acquire military materials, most of which are purchased in the United States.

Also unmentioned, though relevant given the caller's critical focus on aid to Israel, are reciprocal advantages to the United States; benefits return to the United States in the form of technology, including for improved unmanned aircraft, anti-missile defenses, battlefield medical techniques and intelligence on anti-U.S. as well as anti-Israeli Arab and Islamic radicals. And neither guest nor host mentioned the oft-reported facts that U.S. federal deficits and overall debt problems stem primarily from growing, unfunded domestic obligations, beginning with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The figures involved are infinitely greater than annual U.S. foreign aid spending.

Comedy Channeling C-SPAN

MK
CAMERA/Snapshots
14 April '10

Open letter to Jon Stewart, host and executive producer of the Daily Show on Comedy Central (Monday through Thursday, 11:00 PM ET).

Dear Mr. Stewart:

Your popular Daily Show often tackles current news items with clever, caustic humor. In this vein, a March 31, 2010 Daily Show broadcast segment humorously and appropriately lampooned a C-SPAN host‘s feckless handling of a casually racist anti-black caller in a March 29 C-SPAN Washington Journal broadcast. However, this host merely typifies all (or nearly all) of the C-SPAN Journal hosts in their handling of a particular class of bigoted rants by sitting mutely, shuffling papers, and then thanking the callers for their input. These rants, contained in hundreds of calls aired by C-SPAN, are readily available to be mined for humorous fulmination. The documentation is concisely presented on CAMERA’s Website, camera.org, in the following articles (several of the calls documented include video clips): C-SPAN Watch, C-SPAN's Washington Journal a Platform for Anti-Semitism, C-SPAN's Washington Journal Caller Problem, and C-SPAN President's CAMERA Shy Reaction (with video clip) in which C-SPAN’s president, acting as Journal host, is completely tongue-tied reacting to a caller’s news that the historical record shows that Arab anti-Jewish terrorism had preceded Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

These CAMERA articles describe hundreds of Journal calls containing virulent anti-Jewish, anti-Israel rants handled in a feckless or foolish way by the host and (often) the guest.

We trust that you will utilize the Journal broadcast material from CAMERA (or at least make use of the CAMERA material in searching C-SPAN archives) for use in the Daily Showsince you aim (or should aim) to be an equal-opportunity satirist.

Sincerely,

CAMERA

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C-SPAN's Washington Journal Caller Problem

Myron Kaplan/Eric Rozenman
CAMERA Media Analysis
03 February '10

C-SPAN hosts are typically overly respectful and too patient as a handful of frequent callers spew invective and falsehoods against Jews and Israel. No other ethnic or religious group or nation is repeatedly vilified on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal 3-hour daily broadcasts. This vilification is enabled if not positively encouraged by C-SPAN‘s receptivity especially the feckless performance of the hosts. Many C-SPAN viewers, perhaps not knowing the facts and not hearing them from network hosts or, often, from guests, are at risk of being influenced by those callers seemingly driven by an obsessive pathological desire to falsely blame major world problems on the Jews and Israel.

This group of egregious frequent callers features a particular pair, a man and woman, plus their sound-alikes, working basically from the same script. For example, on two consecutive days in January, the Washington Journal host for both days, Paul Orgel, listened politely, first on January 1 at 9:51 AM to "Janet from Birmingham, Alabama" and then on January 2 at 7:50 AM to "Carol from Scotsville, Arizona." Janet’s call took place during a segment whose topic was "Social Networking & Political Participation" (no guest was on hand) while the topic for Carol’s call was "Rise of Al-Qaeda in Yemen." The latter time, the guest was Christopher Boucek of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The following video clip (3.5 minutes) contains the Janet/Carol calls:

(Click here for full transcript plus video)
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