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The following article appeard in The New York Sun on September 16, 2003, on the front page. The original article was posted on the Web at this link.
National Public Radio is reacting to charges that its coverage of the Middle East is biased against Israel -- not by changing the coverage but by hiring a high-powered New York public relations firm to try to improve its image and fund-raising among American Jews.
Dan Klores Communications -- whose clients include Americans for Peace Now and the National Yiddish Radio Project -- has been working with NPR since the summer. One of the associates who will likely work on the account is Wendy Katz, a former Jewish community liaison for Senator Clinton.
The firm has its work cut out for it. Since the second intifada began in the fall of 2000, Jewish groups and individuals have been increasingly critical of NPR's Middle East coverage, accusing the public broadcaster of morally equating the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the conflict.
The most extreme case has been in Boston, where critics have voted with their checkbooks -- causing the local NPR member station, WBUR, to lose $1 million to $2 million in support, a WBUR spokesman said.
NPR has hired "a person working with Dan Klores to assist us and support us in various outreach activities around our programming," said NPR's director of public and media relations, Jessamyn Sarmiento. Dan Klores Communications declined comment.
Hiring Mr. Klores is the latest step in NPR's rigorous public relations effort. In the last year, NPR's president and chief executive officer, Kevin Klose -- a former Moscow bureau chief of the Washington Post -- has met with more than 40 local Jewish groups. He addressed the National Jewish Press Association at its annual meeting in June 2002.
In January, NPR organized a public panel discussion at Boston's Temple Israel, a large Reform congregation. Mr. Klose and the general manager of WBUR, Jane Christo, faced off against the chairman of the journalism department at Boston University, Bob Zelnick,and Jonathan Tobin,the executive editor of the Jewish Exponent, a weekly newspaper published by the Jewish Federation of Philadelphia. NPR's ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin, has also toured the nation fielding criticism.
"What makes NPR interesting in terms of the controversies of the last year is not that they are in some ways worse,or have been at times worse than other outlets... it's that NPR is worried about what the Jews say about it," said Mr.Tobin. He said Dan Klores Communications recently pitched him an op-ed from Mr. Klose. The Exponent didn't run the piece.
"Name any major network or newspaper and other Jewish writers and journalists have criticized it, but somehow it's Kevin Klose that I've gotten to know," Mr.Tobin said. "The head of CNN wasn't interested in having me come to Boston to speak on a panel with him."
This, reckons Mr. Tobin, is because Mr. Klose, "like any politician or any other figure under pressure -- is dependent on Jewish contributions."
"Wherever you point, [Mr. Klose] has been there in these forays in the Jewish community to try and stanch the outflow of underwriting support," said Andrea Levin, the executive director of the Committee on Accuracy in Middle East Reporting, or Camera, a Boston-based group that keeps a running list on its Web site of what it considers inaccuracies in NPR coverage.
Outside of WBUR, it's hard to quantify how much money NPR has lost because of its Middle East coverage. WNYC, New York's NPR member station, has not lost any underwriters because of it, the station's director of marketing, Lori Ann Krushefski, said. To her knowledge, Ms. Sarmiento said the NPR Foundation, a charity connected with the broadcaster, hadn't either.
Ms. Sarmiento denied that fundraising motivates the NPR's PR effort. "The issue isn't making sure that you're meeting with people to give money to support us," Ms. Sarmiento said. "It's about the persona. You have something to say and we want to be able to respond to that so we can at least leave the table with an understanding."
That doesn't always happen. At the Boston panel in January, the audience of 900 "applauded loudly" when Messrs. Zelnick and Tobin "assailed what they saw as anti-Israel bias or shoddiness in public radio's reporting of the Palestinian-Israeli bloodshed," the Boston Globe reported. Camera members picketed the event, shouting, "NPR distorts the news, covers up attacks on Jews," the Globe wrote.
In spite of its PR tour, NPR says it has no intention of changing its coverage. "We're not going to give in to the demands of an advocacy group," said Ms. Sarmiento. "We take seriously what our listeners have to say about coverage, bad and good, and we hear it, but we're not going to change how we do our job."
And therein may lay the problem.
For NPR, "There is a difference between PR work -- and they've done very good PR work -- and changing the culture of their newsroom," Mr. Tobin said. "The culture of their newsroom hasn't changed."