Re: Gobsmacked

Submitted by Reuben Horne (Australia), Sep 14, 2005 at 00:53

Dr Pipes,
Frankly upon reading this, although I suspected such things were happening to the Palestinean Christians, I was paralyzed by the reality of it all. How is it that none of this finds its way into the western media? Before this I accepted the media was slanted against Israel but actively editing content to exclude realities of Palestinian excesses seems to have grown to such an extent independently of any centralised movement to resemble a propaganda ministry in some as of yet unwritten Orwellian novel.

Whilst my opinion of Islam is low my opinion of the press has sunk even lower. What on earth do they think they are trying to achieve by blindsiding this? If one were asking a journalist, I believe you'd get a reply somewhere along the lines of they are trying to give an unbiased account - one that presents the other point of view. But interestingly in this case their fear of bias against certain groups because of the percieved constitutional ignorance of the majority in their societies means they report only the positive elements or manufactured positive elements of the Muslim aggressors society and actions. After all to the relativist Islam could not possibly be as bad as it seems could it? There must just be problems of perception. All cultures are morally equal - apart from ours it seems.

Journalists rather than see themselves as the product and under the protection of a particular society, culture and set of rules that enables free speech and embraces democracy have developed pretensions of being "citizens of the world." Being "citizens of the world" necessitates an ability to understand the position of vastly different cultures many of which may be scoffed at by westerners if presented in an even handed and honest manner. To translate or edify these cultures into a context that we will embrace the media in applying an ideologically driven "journalistic responsability" and in order to promote the greater truth of their ideology they have had to discard the lesser truths of factual and contextual accuracy. In other words they lie but to them they're telling white lies. Journalists who refuse to comply with these rules are either punished or have their articles almost completely reworked by the editorial class who seem to be entirely of this particular ideological persuasion. Perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised after all we exist in a society in which Michael Moore is an award winning "Documentary Maker".

Two more personal incidents that occurred to me are relevant: Firstly on the "ethnic public broadcast station" SBS in Australia I watched a documentary drama on the perils of the "Refuseniks" an Israeli family who conscientiously objected to service in the Israeli army. Their argument was fracticious, emotional rather than logical and a product of the times (an admission that I make with much disgust and fear). The crux of their argument went thusly: waltzing around in front of Palestinian's with guns in uniform threatened them and hurt their feelings contributing to a cycle of violence. The logical result of their strategy being adopted universally by Israel: the cycle of violence would instead become a unilateral phenomenon. And the Palestinians as demonstrated by this article have /no/ reluctance to continue to dish out unilateral violence on an already subjugated and pacified community. Secondly I had a journalist friend who worked for the low circulation entirely left wing student newspaper at University. He has since moved up several intellectual echelons now and edits a magazine dealing entirely with trucks (and I am /not/ being sarcastic when I say that he has moved up several intellectual echelons). Often he would ask me for remarks on contemporary events since he found mine well worded and then proceed to edit them beyond belief so they wouldn't offend anyone. I thought he was protecting my backside at the time but on reflection and in the light of the above introspections he may have been protecting his own.

Cheers,
Reuben Horne.

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