To: Sarah Gilbert WAMC President and CEO, Roundtable Producers Sarah LaDuke, Madeleine Reynolds, and host Joe Donahue, and the WAMC Board of Trustees,

WAMC faces an existential need to attract younger and more diverse audiences. Especially in light of the Trump administration’s open policy of defunding and destroying public media, younger audiences are essential for long term membership revenue and as sought after demographics for underwriters. We urgently suggest that WAMC embrace this historic crisis as an opportunity to attract much needed younger audiences by expanding the racial/ethnic and ideological diversity of The Roundtable and programs on the station.
Now more than ever, with Trump threatening the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and attacking the basic idea of equal rights, we need diverse voices on local media. Yet, during the two years following the start of Israel’s Genocide on Gaza, producers of WAMC’s The Roundtable prominently featured panelists from institutions materially supporting Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza (1). Of the hundreds of episodes since 10/7/23, only a single episode included a Palestinian-American panelist, Dr. Ahmad Abu-Hakmeh on 7/28/2025 (6). We applaud WAMC and The Roundtable for featuring Dr. Abu-Hakmeh, whose appearance helped expand the discussion to include Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and ongoing propaganda efforts to dehumanize Palestinian people.

We support and strongly encourage producers Sarah LaDuke and host Joe Donahue to continue to include Dr. Abu-Hakmeh on future programs. But it is crucial for the program – and other programs on the station – to include other Palestinian, Middle East/North African (MENA) sources, as well as leaders of pro-Palestine organizations and student groups.
This expansion of the guestlist on The Roundtable is needed to redress the producers’ prior discriminatory practices. Producers rejected and ignored numerous requests from Palestinian-American and MENA sources as well as pro-Palestine leaders (2). Four of five of the program’s Middle East experts come from the DoD, NSC, DHS, and even one (Robert Griffin) whose job is to build partnerships with a branch of the IDF (3, 4). Military affiliated panelists appeared on the Roundtable 12 times as often as independent experts (5).
Sources from the NY Democratic party made the most appearances of any group since the start of the war (6). These are not neutral sources but members of a party whose leaders spearheaded efforts to repress pro-Palestine protests during Pres. Biden’s administration and to materially support Israel’s war (7). When covering the Palestine-Israel question, The Roundtable’s overwhelming preference is for sources from US military institutions and political parties designing, defending, and implementing US policy of unconditional support for Israel’s war.

This editorial policy predictably alienates the precise younger and racially and ethnically diverse listeners that WAMC must attract in order to survive over the long-term. A two-thirds majority of Americans oppose Israel’s war on Gaza, according to Gallup polling (8). Younger Jewish listeners, the children of many of WAMC’s member supporters, are among those who now vocally express their opposition to US support for Isreal’s war (9).

We demand that WAMC and the producers of The Roundtable and other programs continue to diversify their coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza. Fairness requires balancing institutional sources with regular inclusion of those affected by their policies, namely Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans. Younger audiences, increasingly aware of critical reporting on the genocide through social media, are apt observers of imbalance on this topic. In line with WAMC’s own fairness policies, WAMC must include even more Palestinian perspectives.

Sources:
(1) https://jamesearlowensphd.com/p/wamcs-the-roundtable-continues-to
(2) https://jamesearlowensphd.com/p/palestinian-exclusion-on-wamcs-the
(3) https://jamesearlowensphd.com/p/palestinian-exclusion-on-wamcs-the-666
(4) https://www.albany.edu/news/91878.php
(5) https://jamesearlowensphd.com/p/wamcs-the-roundtable-continues-to
(6) Ibid.
(7) https://newrepublic.com/post/182727/new-york-governor-hochul-repress-protests-gaza-palestine-mask-ban, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/22/hochul-israel-aid-duty-00142694
(8) https://news.gallup.com/poll/692948/u.s.-back-israel-military-action-gaza-new-low.aspx
(9) https://www.timesofisrael.com/mamdani-holds-wide-edge-among-jewish-voters-in-new-nyc-mayoral-race-poll/