The American Spectator

Print Email

Text Size

The Spectacle Blog

Bill Bennett and Alan Dershowitz make points similar to Ben Stein's current article in the Post today.

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.

As each day passes and the major newspapers fail to print the Mohammed cartoons, the media's total failure grows more apparent. Like in the Plame case, the media's actions have only harmed themselves. With confidential sources now in jeopardy, why not make the vaunted freedom of the press selective?

topics:
Mainstream Media, Islam, Israel