Local NYT Owned Radio Station Cans Pro-Sderot Editorial

Even as the kassam rockets slam into Israel yet again today near Ashkelon and three more slammed into Sderot, a New York City local radio station canned a paid advertisement by the AJC regarding the ongoing situation in Sderot (HT: buzzsawmonkey at LGF). The radio station, WQXR, is owned by the New York Times corporation.

In a letter to the AJC, WQXR general manager Tom Bartunek said parts of the spot were "outside our bounds of acceptability. First, the opening line . . . does not make clear that the potential target of the missile is not our listening area, and as a consequence, runs the risk of raising anxiety in a misleading way. Second, the description of the missiles as arriving 'day or night' and 'daily' is also subject to challenge as being misleading, at least to the degree that reasonable people might be troubled by the absence of any acknowledgment of reciprocal Israeli military actions."

Geller said Bartunek told the AJC the "general tone" didn't meet WQXR guidelines for "decorum," and the station also bans ads for "hemorrhoid cream or sexual potency pills." CBS Radio had no problem with the same spot, which it aired nationally on newsman Charles Osgood's "The Osgood File."

"We are finished with QXR. We've canceled our contract," Geller told us. "It's a shame, but we can't allow ourselves to be edited on a whim."

In the past, some media critics have accused the Times of having a pro-Palestinian slant. Times flack Catherine Mathis told us the paper "had no role in determining whether to run this ad." She noted WQXR had run eight other AJC spots read by Harris over the past 12 weeks.

What exactly is untrue about the Sderot spots? The rockets have indeed been slamming into Israel and Sderot on a regular basis. That the New York Times fails to cover such attacks is a testament to its own failures, not to the AJC's veracity. Indeed, Sderot residents don't have 15 seconds to respond - they have on average nine seconds because the alarms will often sound after the kassams have already slammed into the city. 15 seconds is an eternity compared to the time it takes for the Palestinian terrorists to fire the rockets and have them slam into Sderot day care facilities, homes, apartment buildings, and businesses. It is a fear that Sderot has to live with day in and day out.

And the fact is that many New York area Jews has friends and family living in Israel, some of whom may live in range of those missiles and rocket and mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip.

What is misleading is the fact that the radio station thinks that they are an arbiter of what's factually relevant and accurate. The fact is that the rockets and mortar attacks do rain down on Israel on a near daily basis - and Israel doesn't generally respond in a serious way unless Israelis have been seriously injured or killed or a significantly large number of kassams have been fired in a given barrage. Don't believe me? Simply search through my coverage of the kassam attacks.

The radio station simply couldn't be more hopelessly wrong.