The suppression of the controversial Muhammad cartoons by the liberal media has exposed their hypocrisy for everyone to see. In the final analysis, when they’re scared or being politically correct, they don’t really believe in exercising their First Amendment rights. This is called self-censorship.
Deborah Howell, ombudsman for the Washington Post, said that hundreds of readers of the paper had asked why the Post hadn’t reprinted the cartoons and said that they “questioned the Post’s journalistic courage.” But don’t worry. She reported that Executive Editor Len Downie made the decision based on “journalistic judgment, not courage.”
During an appearance on Wolf Blitzer’s CNN show on February 9, conservative commentator William Bennett saw it differently, correctly insisting that “?these mobs have silenced the mainstream media?”
Bennett appeared shortly after CNN had run anti-Semitic cartoons that have appeared in the Arab press.
“If I were a Jew watching what CNN just led in with, I might be a little upset, too,” said Bennett. “But CNN doesn’t have the solicitude for Jews it has for Muslims. Your policy is not to show these cartoons that were shown in Denmark, but to show one after another of the most anti-Semitic cartoons they could come forward with.”
He went on to say, “I don’t mean to pick on CNN, just because I work for you. But NBC, ‘The New York Times,’ other media?[they will show] the Virgin Mary in cow dung, that was fine. We can show that everywhere. Now, the Islamists have won, in that they have intimidated the major news media from showing these cartoons.”
Blitzer shot back: “But, you know, on these?showing of these anti- Semitic cartoons, I think you will find that most Israelis, certainly most Jews, want the world to see some of these caricatures, in order to shed some light on what the?images that have been portrayed…”
Bennett noted this is because the Israelis have an open society and believe in “open debate and discussion,” in contrast to the situations in most Arab and Muslim countries.
But I thought that CNN and the Post also believed in open debate and discussion. This is apparently not the case when it involves a possible violent reaction from radical Islam.
Our media have shown themselves to be cowards. Shame on them.
To the media we say: spare us any more lectures on the meaning of the First Amendment.
Comments
Comments are turned off for this article.