Abu Ghraib <> Muhammad Cartoons
I would like for someone to explain to me why salon.com, and Australian Dateline feel the responsibility to publish more pictures of the disgrace at Abu Ghraib, and yet they do not feel the responsiblity to publish the Muhammad cartoons.
This level of hippocrisy is absolutely unbelievable to me! I still am not sure which side of the fence that I fall on in regards to the cartoons, to publish, or not to publish. However, there is absolutely no logical way that you can justify NOT publishing the Muhammad cartoons, and at the same time JUSTIFY publishing MORE pictures of Abu Ghraib!
I heard an editor at salon.com explain that she felt the pictures needed to be published in order to more fully describe how truly tragic and disgraceful the situation at Abu Ghraib actually was. Yet, this same outlet did not feel it necessary to publish the cartoon's causing all of the excitement in order to let their readers make their own opinion? How can this be?
Someone, please explain this to me.
posted by Carl Spackler @ 3:27 PM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
Good point, Carl. The stock answer that comes to my mind is that the press does not fear violent retaliation from the Australian or American governments. With little risk of retaliation why not publish more pictures if it might sell newsprint? And if it sells papers it is deemed newsworthy. So what if it starts another riot in Pakistan? The rioters' anger will be directed at the American govt, not at the press.
But the press does fear retaliation from muslims. When all sorts of rationalizations about the "proper" and "sensitive towards people's religious beliefs" thing to do are sanctimoniously offered up as a reason not to offend Islam the way we offend every other thing in our Western press we understand plainly that the campaign of intimidation by extremists is working. Self censorship is becoming rife in the western press where any discussion of Islam is concerned.
Every day, before and since 9/11, we alter our values to accomodate the new reality they are imposing on us.
-Ico
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