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Newsweek: Assigning Blame
Where
Blame Is Due
Current Events/Frank
Salvato, Managing Editor |
May 20, 2005
- Since my piece on Newsweek’s Quran desecration
story, some have suggested that perhaps Newsweek isn’t totally to blame for
the violent response in the Middle East. For the record, the opinion I
expressed in
The
Toilets in Cuba Aren’t Better Than Ours was written to address
Newsweek’s actions. The fact is I agree that there were other causes of the
uprisings in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the land of over-the-top
reactions.
Those who are trying to piggy-back the blame for the murderous and
reactionary protests sparked by the Newsweek story onto the minor abuses at
Abu Ghraib are guilty of the most disingenuous and appalling rewrite of
recent history that media activism has ever concocted. A slaying at the hand
of a fanatic is an atrocity. Humiliating incarcerated terrorists in an
effort to gain information to prevent the deaths of innocents is not.
How an unvetted story published by a mainstream media source suddenly
becomes anyone else’s fault but that of the reporters, their editors and the
publication that employs them is astounding. Webster’s American Dictionary
should start to use – officially – the descriptors "arrogance” and
"repugnant” when defining the term "mainstream media.”
There is absolutely no responsibility employed by those who practice media
activism. There is no responsibility employed by those in journalism who are
lazy in the execution of their jobs, either. Activist journalists who take
at face value unsubstantiated evidence because it favors their agenda risk
catastrophic consequences. Whether they are hi-jacking public opinion
through deception or contributing to the murders of innocents through
incompetent reporting, a major portion of the blame rests with the
mainstream media.
As negligent as Newsweek and its parent company The Washington Post were in
publishing their unsubstantiated rumors, they can only be ascribed with part
of the blame. An equal if not larger part of the blame for the 16 deaths and
hundreds of injured should be assigned to the people who actually did the
killing and the rioting.
While some in the Arab world have been socialized to protest without picking
up a Kalashnikov to bolster their low testosterone counts, many have not.
Perhaps it’s the heat. Regardless, those wild-eyed reactionaries who take to
the streets of Kabul, Tehran and all of the other Middle Eastern locales
that literally have constructed their streets to
accommodate reoccurring
mass demonstrations of illogically justified violent outrage, have the
lion’s share of the blood on their hands. Common sense mandates that those
who do the killing, maiming and injuring are directly responsible for the
deaths, disfigurements and disabilities.
Interesting to note is the fact that Christians all over the world remained
calm – albeit outraged – at the reports of Palestinians using bibles for
toilet paper when they were holed up in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity
in 2002. Christians around the world, even though they are outraged, refrain
from killing one another in protest of the Saudi government’s routine
shredding of the Holy Bible.
I wonder how quickly a Westerner’s head would be lopped off if he shredded a
Quran or used its pages for wiping their posterior. Something tells me that
a deranged saif brandishing simpleton would be dispatched, posthaste.
As long as radical-Islamic fanatics, a.k.a. terrorists, are permitted
obdurate contempt for anything or anyone contrary to their beliefs, and as
long as the Islamic world community accepts their contempt as
unobjectionable, reports such as Newsweek’s faux Quran desecration story
will incite catastrophe. Because we understand that the radical-Islamist is
simple- minded with all the restraint of a hyper Kindergartener off his
Ritalin, the "catalyst” – in this case Newsweek – must always be responsible
for the reactions it creates.
Perhaps there is one more element associated with this issue of blame.
Truly disturbing is that no matter how many times the mainstream media
purposely publishes inaccurate accounts of events, creates stories, ignores
real stories or slants its facts in displays of agenda-driven media
activism, the bulk of the American public continues to purchase their
publications. As long as there are those who are enticed to gawk at the
monstrosity of the tragedy, these merchants of sensationalized
disinformation will thrive.
The mainstream media has ceased being about the facts and in its present
state exists only to offer the events of the day through the eyes of the
agenda-bent and ideological. People are starved for accurate information
delivered in good faith. But there is hope.
Today an ever increasing number of Americans are turning away from
traditional news outlets and finding alternative sources for their
information. Some are calling it the "New Media.” I like to describe it as
an evolution back to honest, transparent reporting, true and simple; the
epitome of the definition of ‘journalism,’ not the bastardization that is
today’s mainstream media.
A message is being sent, and judging by how the mainstream media is circling
the wagons around Newsweek and acquiescing to the tantrums of simplistic
barbarians, I would suggest that they are hearing our message loud and
clear.
Related Reading:
Palestinians used Bible as toilet paper
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44324
Saudis Shred Bibles, Rights Campaigners Claim
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200505/FOR20050519a.html
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