Politics make strange bedfellows. Conservative Bill Bennett and liberal Alan M. Dershowitz, the law professor at Harvard, have a joint editorial today in the Washingtin Post which is a must read for all media watchers,
Since the war on terrorism began, the mainstream press has had no problem printing stories and pictures that challenged the administration and, in the view of some, compromised our war and peace efforts. The manifold images of abuse at Abu Ghraib come to mind — images that struck at our effort to win support from Arab governments and peoples, and that pierced the heart of the Muslim world as well as the U.S. military.
The press has had no problem with breaking a story using classified information on detention centers for captured terrorists and suspects — stories that could harm our allies. And it disclosed a surveillance program so highly classified that most members of Congress were unaware of it.
In its zeal to publish stories critical of our nation’s efforts — and clearly upsetting to enemies and allies alike — the press has printed some articles that turned out to be inaccurate. The Guantanamo Bay flushing of the Koran comes to mind.
But for the past month, the Islamist street has been on an intifada over cartoons depicting Muhammad that were first published months ago in a Danish newspaper. Protests in London — never mind Jordan, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Iran and other countries not noted for their commitment to democratic principles — included signs that read, “Behead those who insult Islam.” The mainstream U.S. media have covered this worldwide uprising; it is, after all, a glimpse into the sentiments of our enemy and its allies. And yet it has refused, with but a few exceptions, to show the cartoons that purportedly caused all the outrage.
This is a damning indictment of the MSM, and they don’t even bring up the laughable, over the top coverage of the Cheney shooting, Al Gore’s anti-American diatribe in Saudi Arabia or Bill Clinton taking the side of the “Arab Street” over the free press in the cartoon controversy.