‘The View’: Whoopi Goldberg Slams the Media for College Protests Coverage

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The cohosts of The View were back after a week-long vacation from the talk show and jumped right into a very hot “Hot Topic” at the top of Monday’s show: the ongoing, nationwide protests taking place across major college campuses in response to the ongoing violence between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Moderator Whoopi Goldberg started out by framing the discussion with, “Obviously, and let’s be very clear about this, no one supports any anti-Semitic hate speech and students fearing for their safety. But do they have the right to peacefully protest about ending violence? Isn’t this part of being an American and also, standing up when you see something that’s wrong?”

From there, Alyssa Farah Griffin was the first to offer her take, agreeing that the right to free speech and assembly is deeply protected in America. However, she argued that some of the protests are infringing on others’ rights, too — particularly Jewish students who may feel threatened by the rhetoric.

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“I talked to students who I taught, to one who actually withdrew from her first semester at her school mid-semester because she felt unsafe for what she was seeing on her college campus. Here’s what I will say as a Lebanese American: I’m disgusted seeing Hezbollah flags, a terrorist organization, flying on American college campuses,” she said.

Sara Haines was on a similar page as Griffin, saying, “My problem here is that there is a point it crosses over — even Dr. King quotes that you have to be civil and you have to accept your consequences for whatever that is. They are now shutting down the fundamental primary purpose of a college. There are people that send their kids to school to learn, and right now this is imposing on the entire party. That’s when your civil rights, I think, on a college private institution, the college has to step up and say, ‘Encampments, shutting down the institutions for your message is a step too far.'”

Meanwhile, Ana Navarro had a very unique perspective on the matter, due to her past as part of a dictatorship, explaining, “One of the things that distinguishes us from many other countries is that in this country, we have the right to protest peacefully. We have the right to assemble peacefully. We have the right to freedom of speech. Again, the line to me is when it puts other people’s safety and welfare at risk. That is a difference.”

Navarro got especially heated, though, when discussing those students who’ve vowed to not vote for the incumbent Joe Biden in the presidential election as a result of the administration’s actions in Gaza: “We’ve heard them call Joe Biden ‘a genocidal assassin’ and all sorts of things. There is not one group that anybody is protesting over that will be better off under Donald Trump. So be very careful that you don’t cut off your nose to spite your face by not showing up to vote in November because the first thing that Donald Trump did when he became president was issue a Muslim ban,” Navarro said. “And if you think not showing up to vote is not going to help Donald Trump get elected and Donald Trump will give Palestine any justice, I want what you’re smoking.”

Sunny Hostin also took a big-picture approach and slightly disagreed with her cohosts, arguing that the protests are part of a long history of anti-war protests on college campuses, and other frameworking is deleterious. “I think these are anti-war protests, and I think it’s very distressing that we are framing these as ‘pro-Palestinian’ protests, or ‘pro-Israeli protests.’ These are anti-war protests.”

Goldberg closed the segment on a similar note as Hostin, noting, “It’s one of the great rights as an American to stand up and say something’s wrong. Regardless of what your color is, if you’re a woman, man, it doesn’t matter. And we must teach our people how to be on the lookout.”

She then went on to point fingers at mainstream media coverage of the protests as being problematic: “Part of our problem is the media takes what is the best clickbait so you see the same posters, you see the same people, but you don’t see the folks who are doing peaceful stuff and saying, ‘Here’s what we want to do.’ I would caution the media to be very careful about what they’re doing and how they’re handling this… I like when students get mad and say, ‘We want a change made.'”

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