Sanitizing Violent, Flag-Burning Pro-Hamas Protesters

Written by Tim Graham

On the same day that President Joe Biden implied Jan. 6 was a darker day than 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, leftist protesters fought and shoved police and burned the American flag near the Capitol. They pulled down the American flag and replaced it with the Palestinian flag. Some flew the Hamas flag and vandalized monuments with spray-painted slogans like “Hamas is comin'” and “I commend Hamas.”

The occasion was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to a joint session of Congress. So how would our D.C.-riot-hating media treat this? Some largely pretended it did not exist (like The Wall Street Journal news pages). Even Netanyahu denouncing some protesters as “useful idiots” for Iran didn’t drag out more detail.

Others went into denial. On the “PBS NewsHour,” reporter Nick Schifrin asked former U.S. Representative Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) about Netanyahu calling protesters “useful idiots” for Iran. Malinowski replied, “If you look at the protesters who are flying the Hamas flag and burning the American flag —” Schifrin interrupted: “You mean they’re flying the Palestinian flag.” No, photographs showed Hamas flags were flown by someone. It’s funny how they avoid that.

On NPR’s “All Things Considered,” reporter Jennifer Ludden found protesters to denounce Biden as a “silent accomplice,” but insisted they were “largely peaceful.” Shoving cops and vandalizing monuments and burning flags were not “considered.”

On NBC, you could see vandalized monuments behind anchorman Lester Holt, but he and reporter Andrea Mitchell merely used the “thousands of protesters” to underline that Netanyahu was controversial, not that the protesters were in any way controversial. No flag-burning appeared, and no violence toward police was pointed out.

On CBS, reporter Scott MacFarlane — who aggressively promoted the Pelosi-Picked Panel on Jan. 6 for several years — showed protesters burning the American flag and described them as merely “raucous.” He also highlighted protests by U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) [with her little black paddle with the words “War Criminal”] and U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who claimed it was “important not to legitimize a leader who attacked democracy.”

Only ABC devoted an entire TV story to the protests. ABC reporter Matt Gutman showed the flag-burning and burning Netanyahu in effigy. He showed “defaced” monuments. But there was no mention of violence toward police (just officers were “swarmed”). On screen, ABC put “violent” in quotation marks about the protesters.

None of these stories described the protesters with an ideological label, when the organizers are radical-left, and some are affiliated with communist parties (like International ANSWER). The New York Times offered 17 paragraphs on “activist groups” without a label, although they noted the crowd was “waving Palestinian flags.”

The Washington Post, the local paper, put “U.S. flag set ablaze” in their headline, but noted “most demonstrators walked and chanted peacefully.” There were no ideological descriptions in 36 paragraphs. They were just “pro-Palestinian protesters.” They did quote the vandalized messages “All Zionists are bastards” and late in the piece, “Hamas is comin’.” But they did let a leftist rabbi denounce Netanyahu as a “zealot” with “fascist politics.”

While most stories noted that scads of Democrats from Kamala Harris on down boycotted the Netanyahu speech, no one questioned whether that was controversial with Jewish voters or could harm the Democrats in the fall.

It was fascinating when Harris then issued a statement condemning flag-burning, “unpatriotic” protesters associated with Hamas, and “pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric.” Where did she find out about that? Too many “news” outlets buried that news.

Tim Graham is Executive Editor of NewsBusters and host of the NewsBusters Podcast. His career at the Media Research Center began in February 1989 as associate editor of MediaWatch, the monthly newsletter of the MRC before the Internet era.