The Bias of Mr Jennings

As you are already no doubt aware, ABC anchor Peter Jennings has succumbed to lung cancer at the age of 67.

Jennings became a foreign correspondent for the network, covering such stories as the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, when members of the Arab terrorist group Black September seized the Israeli compound and took athletes hostage and later killed them.

Jennings established his record of pro-Palestinian coverage early in his career. In 1972, as a reporter covering the Palestinian murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, Jennings would not refer to the murderers as “terrorists.” Instead he called them “guerrillas” and “commandos.”

 

Martin Peretz, publisher of The New Republic, wrote (Sept. 13, 2001):

 

“I first saw Jennings on ABC when, as a young TV journalist, he reported from the Munich Olympics. And I was filled with disgust that his subsequent career has only deepened. At Munich — I still remember it, 30 years later — Jennings tried to explain away the abductions and massacre of the young Israeli athletes. His theme: The Palestinians were helpless and desperate. Ipso facto, they were driven to murder. That’s life…”

 

In Sept. 2002, when ABC News aired a retrospective on the Olympic Massacre, Jennings unabashedly said that Israel should stop regarding the Palestinians as terrorists as a result of the Olympic Massacre of three decades ago. Jennings dismissed the continual barrage of thousands of Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis, not only before, but also since the 72 Olympics.

In response, television critic Tom Shales wrote in the Washington Post (Sept. 17, 2001):

 

“[Jennings] hosted what looked like a little intercontinental tea party for alleged experts on the Middle East, one of whom was professional Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi, whom Jennings hailed as ‘widely known in the United States.’ Also widely disliked. Jennings and Ashrawi greeted each other like old pals, with broad smiles and warm greetings.

 

“Jennings wanted to know, he said, how anyone could hate America so much that they would launch this kind of vicious, calamitous attack. Ashrawi blamed U.S. foreign policy (for having ‘fought Arab nationalism’) and, predictably for her, Israel. Ashrawi complained that ‘Israel is given preferential treatment, treated as a country above the law, as part of her condemnation. Jennings deferred to Ashrawi, as usual, and let her filibuster. It was a nauseating display…”

 

In a critique of the same Jennings broadcast, TVspy.com reports (Sept. 20, 2001):

 

“It’s no surprise that ABC News anchor Peter Jennings allowed Palestinian proselytizer Hanan Ashrawi to peddle propaganda on his program — she used to be his girlfriend. U.S. News World Report noted in 1991: ‘In the early 1970s, when he was single and head of the ABC bureau in Beirut, Jennings dated Ashrawi, who at the time was also single and a graduate student in literature at the American University in the Lebanese capital. Jennings was introduced to Ashrawi’s parents and sisters and became part of her circle of friends.

 

“In 1995, Denver Rocky Mountain News international editor Holger Jensen… [wrote] about staying at the Commodore Hotel in Beirut while covering events in war-torn Lebanon. Jensen recalled that Jennings stayed there as well, ‘courting a long succession of Palestinian lovelies including Hanan Ashrawi.” *

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