During a segment on “Ronan Farrow Daily,” MSNBC contributor and Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal took on the media–and MSNBC–for “disgustingly biased” Middle East coverage.
“We are ridiculous. We are disgustingly biased when it comes to this issue,” Jebreal said, noting she thinks biased media coverage has helped U.S. officials stay silent when they’re opposed to some of Israel’s actions.
“Look at how much airtime Netanyahu and his folks have on air on a daily basis. Andrea Mitchell, and others–I’ve never seen one Palestinian being interviewed on these same issues,” Jebreal continued. When Farrow pushed back that MSNBC has had Palestinians on-air, Jebreal said “maybe for 30 seconds, and then you have 25 minutes for Bibi Netanyahu.”
She then brought up NBC’s decision to pull foreign correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin last week from Gaza, suggesting that because he was “covering the Palestinian side” in a “too pro-Palestinian” way, he was pulled from Gaza, and only reinserted because of social media pushback. Farrow again pushed back that Mohyeldin is now back on-air, and that MSNBC was currently offering airtime to her.
We reached out to MSNBC for Mitchell’s response to accusations of bias, but haven’t heard back.