MSM newspapers have put food on my table for almost 17 years, so I am a bit reluctant to bite the hand that pays me. However, I don't agree with the decision by most American newspapers, including my own, not to publish the Muhammed cartoons that have sparked so much violence around the world. Those cartoons, as distasteful as they might be to editors and/or their readers, fit the definition of "news," especially considering the response they have sparked. Isn't everyone better off when everyone can see for themselves what all the shouting — and burning and killing — is about? Whose sensibilities exactly are we protecting, and is being "politically correct" worth what we give up in return?
There is a growing backlash against the MSM newspapers for not publishing the cartoons. The latest salvo was fired this morning by the odd couple of William J. Bennett and Alan Dershowitz, in an op-ed in The Washington Post. On this story, they argue, the press has failed.
"We two come from different political and philosophical perspectives, but on this we agree: Over the past few weeks, the press has betrayed not only its duties but its responsibilities," they write.
The crux of their argument is that the cartoon story has exposed inconsistencies and double standards in how the press reports on religion, national security and other topics. The press has revealed classified information about how the government is imprisoning terrorists and wiretapping suspected terrorists. It also seems to have had no qualms in the past about publishing images "offensive" to Catholics and Jews.
So why not publish the Muhammed cartoons, reaction to which has shaken the world?
Bennett and Dershowitz argue that the press has fallen victim to ideological extortion.
What has happened? To put it simply, radical Islamists have won a war of intimidation. They have cowed the major news media from showing these cartoons. The mainstream press has capitulated to the Islamists -- their threats more than their sensibilities. One did not see Catholics claiming the right to mayhem in the wake of the republished depiction of the Virgin Mary covered in cow dung, any more than one saw a rejuvenated Jewish Defense League take to the street or blow up an office when Ariel Sharon was depicted as Hitler or when the Israeli army was depicted as murdering the baby Jesus.
So far as we can tell, a new, twin policy from the mainstream media has been promulgated: (a) If a group is strong enough in its reaction to a story or caricature, the press will refrain from printing that story or caricature, and (b) if the group is pandered to by the mainstream media, the media then will go through elaborate contortions and defenses to justify its abdication of duty. At bottom, this is an unacceptable form of not-so-benign bigotry, representing a higher expectation from Christians and Jews than from Muslims.
While we may disagree among ourselves about whether and when the public interest justifies the disclosure of classified wartime information, our general agreement and understanding of the First Amendment and a free press is informed by the fact -- not opinion but fact -- that without broad freedom, without responsibility for the right to know carried out by courageous writers, editors, political cartoonists and publishers, our democracy would be weaker, if not nonexistent. There should be no group or mob veto of a story that is in the public interest.
When we were attacked on Sept. 11, we knew the main reason for the attack was that Islamists hated our way of life, our virtues, our freedoms. What we never imagined was that the free press -- an institution at the heart of those virtues and freedoms -- would be among the first to surrender.
Recent Comments