NBC Reverses; Mohyeldin to Return to Gaza to Cover ‘Palestinian Side of Story’

posted on: Jul 21, 2014

I don’t know who can take credit for this, Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, the US Campaign to End the Occupation, Jewish Voice for Peace, the many reporters and readers who have been calling NBC– all of you out there– but this is triumphant news. It broke on reporter New York Times TV correspondent Bill Carter’s twitter feed.

And here is the official NBC statement:

“Ayman Mohyeldin has done extraordinary reporting throughout the escalation of the conflict in Gaza, filing 25+ reports over the past 17 days, including his invaluable and well-documented contribution to the story on the deaths of the four Palestinian children on Wednesday. As with any news team in conflict zones, deployments are constantly reassessed. We’ve carefully considered our deployment decisions and we will be sending Ayman back to Gaza over the weekend. We look forward to his contributions in the coming days.”

A bit defensive, huh? Bill Carter has put up a story at the Times that cites social media pressure on the decision but offers no inside explanation of the moves:

The decision to pull Mr. Mohyeldin off the story, after he witnessed an Israeli air attack that killed four young Palestinians and then posted remarks on Twitter about it, prompted a round of questions, and much criticism of NBC among Internet commenters. Some accused the network of reacting to pressure from the Israeli side of the conflict. ..

Other commenters speculated that NBC might have felt that Mr. Mohyeldin showed too much empathy in his social media comments. At one point he wrote, “just spent 45 min see family relative after relative learn that their children have been killed in #Israeli shelling of #Gaza port #horror.”…

On Friday, NBC declined to give any explanation — official or not — for the sudden decision to send Mr. Mohyeldin back into Gaza.

A triumph. In the midst of one of the worst human rights atrocities on the docket of the U.S., that’s the only word for it. Our country is changing; and brilliant young Arab-Americans are leaders.

Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss