PETER'S PRINCIPLES

not seeing much of either (the
Kuwaiti or the Palestinian
resistances). In fact, Gaza is still off-
limits to western newsmen."
And, he said, he had used
"intifada" in its original Arabic
meaning of "uprising." He had not
intended it in the more discrete
meaning it has acquired since 1987
to refer to the Palestinian revolt
against Israeli authority.
"It was," he conceded, "a dumb
linguistic thing to say."
But Jerusalem Post media critic
David Bar-Illan pondered what Mr.
Jennings could have meant "after
three years of indulgent, intensive
coverage of the intifada on televi-
sion."
And by apparently equating these
two "resistances," said CAMERA's
Andrea Levin, Mr. Jennings was
fostering the very "linkage" bet-
ween the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait that
Saddam Hussein was trying to fi-
nesse.
Also criticized were the anchor's
remarks on Jan. 17, the night the
first Iraqi Scud slammed into Tel
Aviv. After Israeli Ambassador
Zalman Shoval stated that Israel
had shelved a preemptive strike
against Iraq at the United States'
request, Mr. Jennings commented
that he had "laid a pretty heavy trip
on the United States."
"An inappropriate remark at the
time," Mr. Jennings recently ad-
mitted.
The anchor was also scrutinized
for a question he had posed earlier
that night to ABC correspondent
Cokie Roberts as she stood outside
the Capitol:
"It is interesting, isn't it, that
there is just that much more sym-
pathy for Israel on Capitol Hill, and
in the country at large, than there is
for the two nations, Saudi Arabia
and Kuwait, for which this coalition
has gone to war."
To pro-Israel viewers, Mr. Jenn-
ings seemed to be questioning the
basis of America's deep-seated sym-
pathy for the Jewish state.
But Mr. Jennings and Ms. Roberts
both recalled the episode in a diff-
erent light.
"It's just a simple question about
political sympathy in the United
States," said the anchor in disbelief
that anyone could attribute a diff-
erent intention into his query to Ms.
Roberts.
And the Washington correspon-
dent remembered, "I was thinking,
`This is a man who has been on the
air for 26 hours and he's doing a

42

FRIDAY, MAY 31, 1991

At the National Press Club last December: Calling the Kuwaiti and Palestinian resistances an "intifada" was a "dumb linguistic thing."

masterful job.' I thought he was ask-
ing about Israel's influence in Con-
gress. I tried to broaden my answer
to say that there were some other
groups in the country, such as fun-
damentalist Christians, that were as
adamant in their support of Israel. I
said, 'Everybody's sitting down and
reading the same Bible.
"This was not a hard-driving an-
chor-to-reporter discussion," she
said. "It was a searching conversa-
tion. It's such a mistake to parse
something like this. When you're on
the air, and you're as tired as we
were, you don't think through every
nuance. What tends to happen is
that people who are passionate
about an issue see everything as
much more meaningful than it all
really seems."

his politics may be — and despite the
temptation to espouse them in what
could easily be the nightly "bully
pulpit" 9f evening news — he sets
them aside in the service of his craft.
"Each of us in this business have
biases," he said. "After all, what is a
man without a bias? He's a non-
thinking person."
"But you can look at a good news
organization and understand that
the people there control their
biases."
The newsman alluded to this same
issue two years ago in an address at
the Episcopal cathedral in
Baltimore. Of a Christian's duty to
be engaged in the world, he said,
"It's that engagement as much as
anything which I'm passionate
about. I try very hard in my daily job
not to be judgmental. If I must tell
you, the urge is sometimes power-
Prisms of Truths
ful."
Powerful, maybe, but retorts Wall
ltimately, the Jennings Street Journal columnist Dorothy
Dilemma boils down to two Rabinowitz, sometimes not sup-
questions: Does — or doesn't pressed. The long, tiring hours of the
he?
Gulf war coverage — coverage, she
Does he personally side with said, in which the anchor's on-
Arabs against Israel? And, perhaps camera defenses slipped ever so
even more importantly, does this af- slightly — revealed him for what he
fect what he does on-camera?
was.
One handicap in settling the first
Yet, Baltimore Sun TV critic
question is that the anchor balks at David Zurawik attributes claims
discussing his politics: "My au- that Mr. Jennings is pro-Arab to the
dience relies on me to convey other elusive psychology of the medium in
people's opinions. I have strong which he works.
views on everything. I just don't talk
"Sometimes we just don't perceive
about them."
how TV affects us," he said. "Some
But he does insist that whatever
viewers may visually associate Jen-

nings with the Arab world because
of all the time he spent there."
The truth may lie somewhere bet-
ween the TV screen and the viewer
at home, who filters everything Mr.
Jennings (and every other
newscaster) says through his or her
own private — and, inevitable —
biases and apprehensions.
(As if to confirm viewers' highly
personal perception of TV news, a

"When you're on the
air," said Cokie
Roberts, "and you're as
tired as we were, you
don't think through
every nuance."

.

questioner during a 1982 broadcast
of "Viewpoint," an ABC program
that featured correspondents being
confronted by aggrieved news sub-
jects, complained that the network
was pro-Palestinian. The next per-
son complained it was anti-
Palestinian.
Mr. Jennings suggested on the
show that this reflected not biased
reporting, but selective listening.)
At this point in his career, there is
probably little that the ABC anchor
can do to reverse the perception that
— psychologically, at least — he is
allied with the Arab cause. The
charges against him almost have a
life of their own now, a self-
perpetuating quality of which the