Watching in disbelief


The mainstream media caves in and surrenders
Ever since this whole thing with the Mohammed cartoons erupted, I've been waiting for the mainstream media to run with the story. After all, this is a free speech issue. You can't get much more free speech than this.

Here it is, a story pretty much tailor made for the press, and only a bare handful of papers have bothered to cover it. How pathetic is that? Well, Andrew Sullivan tells us.

To see or not to see: that is now our question. For the past week and a half, the biggest global story has been the rioting, violence and murder that has exploded over a dozen cartoons in a Danish newspaper.

Former president Bill Clinton has called the cartoons “totally outrageous”. Many mainstream Muslims have claimed that they are indeed offended by them. The Archbishop of Canterbury has opined that they have hurt many feelings and cast a shadow over Christian-Muslim relations.

Others have claimed, in contrast, that the cartoons are tame and cannot even faintly be described as offensive — certainly no more offensive than any number of other cartoons that are published all the time.

That’s my position, by the way. I think that much of the “offence” is contrived, that it has been manipulated by Islamists and the Syrian and Egyptian governments to advance their own agendas, and that Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published them, deserves high praise for facing down Islamist bullies.

But enough about me. What are you to think? You’d think, wouldn’t you, it might be helpful to view the actual cartoons so you can see what on earth this entire fuss is about. But the British and American media have decided that it is not their job to help you understand this story. In fact it is their job to prevent you from fully understanding this story. As of this writing no major newspaper in Britain has published the cartoons; the BBC has shown them only fleetingly and other networks have shied away. All have decided not to give you this critical information, without which no intelligent person can construct an informed and intelligent position on the matter. You’re on your own.

The reasons given are conventional enough: the press doesn’t want to inflame matters further; the cartoons are indeed offensive, and no editor has to publish images that would appal readers; reprinting would merely play into the hands of extremists, and so on.

The one argument you haven’t heard is the one you hear off-camera. Many editors simply don’t want to put their staffs at risk of physical danger. They have “offended” Muslims in the past and learnt to regret it. In New York the editors of a free alternative paper, the New York Press, decided they wanted to run the cartoons so their readers could have a grasp of what this huge story is about. The owner refused. The staff quit en masse. The editor claims the owner gave him a simple explanation: “I’m not putting lives in danger. We’re not getting things blown up.”

The cartoons aren't all that offensive. They aren't that funny, but they surely aren't that offensive. This whole "protest" has been stage managed. You didn't see this kind of reaction in September when the cartoons were published originally. You didn't see this kind of reaction when an Egyptian state-run newspaper ran the cartoons in October.

This is the distraction. Certain parties hope to defuse criticism against Iran and derail the democracy trend in the Middle East. They want to dominate how the West thinks about Islam, and control what is and is not "acceptable."

And it's working. As Evan Coyne Maloney points out.

In other words, after just a few days of rioting, the media has already bent over, surrendered, and accepted Sharia law as the arbiter of its editorial decisions.

Our media has just taught a valuable lesson to the various interest groups of the world: if you want to control how your group is covered, be as threatening and violent as possible.

Personally I find it amazing that the American press will go to any lengths to publish the names of sex offender priests or anything that is critical of mainstream American religion, but will not touch this one issue.

And yes, I know just how ironic it is for a Neopagan to be defending mainstream American religion.

This is the battle of the mind and mindshare, it's no less critical than the battle on the ground. Of all things, you would think that the press would be on the front lines on this one.

This is about the right to criticize, the right to publish, and the right to be heard. You can either embrace that right and fight for it, or you can submit to the "will of Allah" as given to you by the Islamists. We're rapidly running out of middle ground.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Tue - February 14, 2006 at 04:47 AM  Tag


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