Making Lemonade

Don Lemon interviewed Briahna Joy Gray within days of Gray's firing from the Hill's daily webcast Rising.  I strongly encourage you to watch it because Lemon's questioning provides-- even a year after his forced exit from the sine qua non of mainstream media outlets, CNN-- a gratuitous free window into how the mass media does information in an age in which the truth is particularly unkind to the motives and efficacy of the ruling and ownership elite in whose laps they curl up.

Gray was fired from Rising days after presenting a particularly devastating "Radar" or on-air commentary on the topic of a recent segment of Bill Maher's Real Time in which on the explicit basis of his inability to identify with Palestinian humanity, Maher dismissed the imbalance of misery inflicted on Palestinians in Israel's conduct of its prolonged military operation in Gaza, exemplified most recently  in a raid in which it rescued 4 hostages, killing 214 Palestinians (and  as usual, mostly women and children) in the process.  Lemon related that he had listened to Gray's Radar in real time and thought, "uh oh".  To Lemon, Gray's impetus to expose Maher's explicit bigotry and to debunk Israeli mistruths and propaganda around Hamas's conduct on October 7 was self-inflicted flirtation with willingness to be condemned as being pro-Hamas.

"If you knew they had it out for you, why did you continue to do what you did?" Lemon asked. Gray's answer was that she did it to represent the rare voice from the left side of the spectrum counterbalancing the prevailing center/right of center bias on mainstream media, and that she was "testing the hypothesis" of the Rising's producers that Katie Halper's firing from the same program a year before for commentary critical of Israel was not the reason she was fired.

"Do you think it's fair to describe The Hill as a conservative outlet?" Lemon asked.  "Considering the stance you have, if you have the sort of takes that you have on a right-leaning network, one might not be so surprised that they would try to get rid of you. You understand what I'm saying? 

Gray responded, "You're saying basically I asked for it."  She went on to say, "Can an organization hold itself out as one that's invested in free speech, as one that's giving you fair unbiased news coverage when it would fire one of its most popular hosts for ideological reasons?  Rising postures like independent media, it's a streaming show, can feel like one of these podcast like shows.  It does media criticism, covers a lot of free speech stories. It's faux posturing on issues that its audience very much cares about."

Lemon pushed back on the free speech.  "On streaming shows there are a lot of opinions on the right and left that would get you fired from traditional media."  What's more The Hill "didn't have to pay you", Lemon said, suggesting, "there's a free marketplace of ideas, other avenues."  Gray retorted that  news outlets want to project "a  veneer of objectivity, democracy dies in darkness etc."  We know these outlets are biased but we want to think they're "committed to this idea of the truth".  "How can you fire someone for her truthful factual coverage of what's going on in Gaza?" Gray asked, citing the example of her coverage of the originally widely reported, now thoroughly discredited beheadings of babies on October 7.  Her cohost on Rising had persisted in promoting that as fact when it was discredited and suffered no consequeneces.

Lemon: "Saying that Hamas did not behead babies could be viewed by some as being pro-Hamas and couldn't a case be made that Pro-Hamas journalists should not be allowed on the air?  Anyone who supports Hamas in any way should not be able to have a job or be able to speak and have someone pay for you to say that."  Gray: "You're supposed to lie and say that Hamas beheaded 40 babies? Is that what journalism has come to?  In most newsrooms that's exactly what journalism has come to."

Lemon: "Do you think you're at risk of alienating potential allies from the use of such inflammatory terms as genocide and apartheid? "

Gray: "I use the term that the ICJ has plausibly used which is genocide.  Officials have spoken so openly about their intentions in Gaza that it's an open and shut case."

As to the specific incident that is widely pointed to as the basis for which Gray was fired (it's important to note that out of the conversation in which she was released from her contract Gray herself was not made privy to a specific reason), the facts are that the producer of the show intentionally or not withheld information from Gray about the programming of the show the day that Yarden Gonen, the sister of a hostage who Gray was told requested an appearance in order to confront Gray about her reporting in contradiction of Israeli accounts of Hamas atrocities on October 7th beyond what is uncontested was the guest until moments before taping began.  The impetus for Gonen's request was that bucking the editorial priorities of the Rising producers, Gray had insisted on covering the now thoroughly debunked story reported in among other places the New York Times that there had been systematic raping of over 200 women including hostages in the attack.  While a UN panel investigating the claims suggested that incidents of rape or sexual assault consistent with the mayhem of a military attack may have occurred, there was no specific confirmation of the IDF's story -- which conveniently enough surfaced at the time that South Africa brought allegations of Israeli Genocide of Palestinians in Gaza to the International Court of Justice.  Nevertheless, at the conclusion of Gray's interview of Gonen, after Gray had wished for Netanyahu to agree to the terms of a cease fire that would bring her sister's safe return, Gonen said, "Thank you.  Me too, and I really hope that you, specifically, will believe women when they say that they got hurt" which prompted Gray to visibly roll her eyes and cut the interview short.  Was Gray rolling her eyes at the raping of women?   Of course not!  She was rolling her eyes at the fact there are no women even according to the UN report that many mainstream news organizations cited in support of the original Israeli Defense Force's story, even though the investigation had not turned up a single woman or video footage corroborating the IDF's claim.  Nevertheless, Gray's obvious exasperation is assumed to be the pretext for which the termination she had been expecting came to pass.

Lemon was of course, just asking questions.  But as a journalist who was himself recently terminated from CNN, his questions provided some insight into the mindset of the type of talent that finds its way to the screens of our most unquestioning media.  Gray knew she'd be fired, yet she persisted in pursuing truths that her employers were not particularly interested in telling.