New York Times-Owned Radio Station Thinks Hemorrhoids And Sderot Lack Decorum

WQXR, the classical music station owned by the New York Times has canceled an ad describing the situation in Sderot:

"It's unbelievable. At the end of the day, WQXR listeners are interested in Israel," AJC spokesman Michael Geller told Page Six. In the ad, AJC Executive Director David Harris says: "Imagine you had 15 seconds to find shelter from an incoming missile. Fifteen seconds to locate your children, help an elderly relative, assist a disabled person to find shelter. That's all the residents of Sderot and neighboring Israeli towns have. Day or night, the sirens go on. Fifteen seconds later, the missiles, fired from Hamas-controlled Gaza, hit . . . Their aim is to kill and wound and demoralize . . . This is what Israelis experience daily."

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." [emphasis added]

At least the General Manager of WQXR is able to put everything into proper perspective:

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."

An editorial in The New York Sun points out that it is not as if The New York Times does not acknowledge the situation in Sderot--on April 5th it came out with A Town Under Fire Becomes a Symbol for Israel:

This long neglected immigrant town a mile from Gaza, pounded by Palestinian rockets for the past seven years, is taking on a new identity, edging into the center of Zionist consciousness as a symbol of the nation’s unofficial motto: “Never Again.”

True enough. Then again, when Steve Erlanger finally acknowledged what Hamas was up to in his In Gaza, Hamas’s Insults to Jews Complicate Peace, the closest he got to recognizing the situation in Sderot was:

Its videos praise fighters and rocket-launching teams; its broadcasts insult the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, for talking to Israel and the United States; its children’s programs praise “martyrdom,” teach what it calls the perfidy of the Jews and the need to end Israeli occupation over Palestinian land, meaning any part of the state of Israel.

That's one mention of rockets, but no mention of the main target, Sderot--not even once in the entire article.

Sderot has to deal not only with Iran's proxy, but also The New York Times' delicate sense of propriety.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Sderot.