PBS/CNN host Christiane Amanpour likes to say that journalists should “be truthful, not neutral,” but when she welcomed author Reza Aslan to Wednesday’s Amanpour and Company to promote his new children’s book on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, she could not be bothered to fact-check his debunked casualty estimates from Gaza.
Ironically, the whole segment was a violation of Amanpour’s dictum, as the duo portrayed the conflict as a massive tragedy between two sides who refuse to understand that they both have legitimate aspirations and historical grievances against each other. Amanpour began, “So, you know, it just seems to be such a daring thing to do right now, to write a children's book about the hottest conflict, well, obviously Russia and Ukraine as well, but one of the most difficult ones to broach and to think about. So, just tell me why you did it and who actually you're targeting.”
Aslan began, “Well, as you know, over the last seven months of this conflict, since the attacks of October 7th, which led to the death of 1,300 Israelis, including 33 children, some 14,000 children have been killed in Gaza. That's more children than in all the other global conflicts around the world since 2019.”
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