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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| When fear cows the media -- by Jeff Jacoby |
| 2006-02-20 |
| THE PHOENIX is Boston's leading ''alternative" newspaper, the kind of brash, pull-no-punches weekly that might have been expected to print without hesitation the Mohammed cartoons that Islamists have been using to incite rage and riots across the Muslim world. Its willingness to push the envelope was memorably demonstrated in 2002, when it broke with most media to publish a grisly photograph of Daniel Pearl's severed head, and supplied a link on its website to the sickening video of the Wall Street Journal reporter's beheading. But the Phoenix isn't publishing the Mohammed drawings, and in a brutally candid editorial it explained why. ''Our primary reason," the editors confessed, is ''fear of retaliation from . . . bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do . . . Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and . . . could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy. As we feel forced, literally, to bend to maniacal pressure, this may be the darkest moment in our 40-year-publishing history." The vast majority of US media outlets have shied away from reproducing the drawings, but to my knowledge only the Phoenix has been honest enough to admit that it is capitulating to fear. Many of the others have published high-minded editorials and columns about the importance of ''restraint" and ''sensitivity" and not giving ''offense" to Muslims. Several have claimed they wouldn't print the Danish cartoons for the same reason they wouldn't print overtly racist or anti-Semitic material. The managing editor for news of The Oregonian, for example, told her paper's ombudsman that not running the images is like avoiding the N-word -- readers don't need to see a racial slur spelled out to understand its impact. Yet a Nexis search turns up at least 14 occasions since 1999 when The Oregonian has published the N-word unfiltered. So there are times when it is appropriate to run material that some may find offensive. Rationalizations notwithstanding, the refusal of the US media to show the images at the heart of one of the most urgent stories of the day is not about restraint and good taste. It's about fear. Editors and publishers are afraid the thugs will target them as they targeted Danny Pearl and Theo van Gogh; afraid the mob will firebomb their newsrooms as it has firebombed Danish embassies. ''We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible," an imam in Gaza preaches. ''Whoever insults a prophet, kill him," reads the sign carried by a demonstrator in London. Those are not figures of speech but deadly threats, and American newspapers and networks are intimidated. Not everyone has succumbed. The Weekly Standard reproduced the 12 cartoons, and some have appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Sun, and even Spare Change News, a Boston biweekly sold by homeless people. But there has been nothing like the defiance shown in Europe, where some two dozen publications in 13 countries have run the cartoons, insisting that they will not allow thugs to decide what a free press can publish. Journalists can be incredibly brave, but when it comes to covering the Arab and Muslim world, too many news organizations have knuckled under to threats. Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, a veteran foreign correspondent, admitted long ago that ''physical intimidation" by the PLO led reporters to skew their coverage of important stories or to ignore them ''out of fear." Similarly, CNN's former news executive, Jordan Eason, acknowledged after the fall of Saddam Hussein that his network had long sanitized its news from Iraq, since reporting the unvarnished truth ''would have jeopardized the lives of . . . our Baghdad staff." Like the Nazis in the 1930s and the Soviet communists in the Cold War, the Islamofascists are emboldened by appeasement and submissiveness. Give the rampagers and book-burners a veto over artistic and editorial decisions, and you end up not with heightened sensitivity and cultural respect, but with more rampages and more books burned. You betray ideals that generations of Americans have died to defend. And worse than that: You betray as well the dissidents and reformers within the Islamic world, the Muslim Sakharovs and Sharanskys and Havels who yearn for the free, tolerant, and democratic culture that we in the West take for granted. What they want to see from America is not appeasement and apologies and a dread of giving offense. They want to see us face down the fanatics, be unintimidated by bullies. They want to know that in the global struggle against Islamist extremism, we won't let them down. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #8 Maybe someone should do an editorial cartoon about this fear. I bet it'd look like this: |
| Posted by: DMFD 2006-02-20 23:30 |
| #7 This one - particulary no mo uro's comment belong in the 'Classics' section! Excellent comment! A keeper. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2006-02-20 11:28 |
| #6 Thanks all for the kind words. Identifying the fear and naming it is important, in the manner of shining lights on cockroaches. When the true motives are revealed, then and only then will real progress, perhaps even persuasion, be possible. If we are spared the phony platitudes which cover up the fear, we can get straight to the heart of the problem. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2006-02-20 09:38 |
| #5 OT, but I've seen this headline in two places today (here and at jewishworldreview.com), and both times I read it as "When Cows Fear the Media" on the first glance. Moo. |
| Posted by: Mike 2006-02-20 09:17 |
| #4 no mo uro, i took the liberty of reproducing your comment at my website (with attribution of course). A brilliant and insightful commentary on a phenomenon that I have noted, but had problems putting into words. Food for thought. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2006-02-20 08:57 |
| #3 Darn no mo uro, you're stirring up my freedom-loving blood. I played my part in the WoT, but am retired now, but sometimes I wish I could just do something! |
| Posted by: HV 2006-02-20 07:55 |
| #2 When that execrable website "we're sorry" came up after the election, one of the photos consisted of some leftist woman in Texas holding up a sign that read "Pleeeeeease don't bomb Tarrant county", an enclave which voted Dem. Other similar evidence of this attitude abound. A couple of months ago an article was published in a British newspaper (I forget which one) regarding British women in their forties who simply wanted to live like college students forever, and one of the interviewees came out and flatly said that she was an atheist and a solipsist and didn't give a damn what happened to humanity after she was gone, that all that mattered was her own happy not-too-stressful existence continue. The article said, or at least implied, that this attitude was becoming mainstream there. WIth this sort of information being available, it should have been obvious to everyone all along that with very rare exceptions, opposition to the war against the Islamicists and attempts to defeat W in general were not a function of lofty, principaled, intellectually consistent idelologies but rather naked or barely clothed fear of losing one's life as a result of the give and take of a war for to help assure the continuation of our civilization. When you're part of the postmodern thing, you generally believe that your own life - your na- a-a-a-a-rrative - is the reason for the universe. There is literally nothing (in their minds) in the universe more important than one's own continued existence - not our civilization, not our freedom, nothing. Many of these folks simply don't believe in an afterlife and don't care about humanity and its status after they pass on. Therefore, anything at all which creates risk to your life must be avoided, at all costs to one's dignity and decency. If eliminating the risk (ie, WoT) rather than avoiding it incurs some additional risk to life and limb, that's unacceptable as well. The concepts of bravery and taking a risk to maintain a noble ideal are looked upon as foolish, backwards, anti-progressive, etc., but all of these adjectives, deep-down, are a smokescreen put forth to cover up cowardice. The editors of the Phoenix can be reviled for their lack of honor and their foul cowardice, but they do provide a valuable service by giving us a window into the "soul" of the postmodern left and confirming the true motivations therein. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2006-02-20 07:01 |
| #1 the Muslim Sakharovs and Sharanskys and Havels who yearn for the free, tolerant, and democratic culture I'm a looking but I'm a not seeing.... |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-02-20 00:56 |