Posted on 02/23/2002 4:47:09 AM PST by cody32127
We now have confirmation that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is dead. Terrorists - who are sympathizers and compatriots to prisoners of the kind we have in Guantanamo Bay - murdered him in cold blood. Terrorists who are one with the Taliban and with the very Al-Qaeda people we're told we must "understand" and not call "terrorists," reportedly slit Mr. Pearl's throat after making him declare his Jewish heritage before a video camera.
The media's reaction to this murder has been wall-to-wall coverage, sadness and outrage that one of their own has been killed. They're even talking about the "unborn child" Pearl left behind. It's a complete 180-degree change in their attitude. I played examples of this change from CNN, but I don't want to single them out. Everyone in the press reacted this way.
I played clips of Judy Woodruff, Jeff Greenfield, Aaron Brown and Christine Amanpour reporting on the death of Pearl, and I don't recall them ever having been this upset about the war. They did, I guess, set themselves apart from the rest of America. I never have ceased being amazed at Bernard Shaw refusing to be debriefed by American intelligence during the Gulf War because it would "compromise my journalistic principles." I've asked, "Doesn't Bernie know that it is the United States guarantees his freedom to indulge those principles?"
I don't want anybody to misunderstand me here. I join the members of the journalist community being outraged by Daniel Pearl's murder. I support President Bush coming out and saying, "All Americans are sad and angry to learn of the murder." I'm not at all suggesting that media members shouldn't feel outrage, nor am I suggesting they shouldn't discuss it. It's just that I don't recall this level of sorrow even when September 11th hit or when Mike Spann was killed, or when Al-Qaeda ambushed and murdered that U.S. soldier in Afghanistan.
Just look where the New York Times positioned their story on Pearl's death versus the one on the dozen troops aboard that deadly Chinook helicopter crash in the Philippines. You have to go down to the bottom of the front page and practically get a magnifying glass to find the chopper crash, but Pearl is right above the fold on the front page. There's a focus here that is easily noted. Before this, there'd been more sorrow for Johnny bin Walker than there was for our men killed in action. Not anymore. Maybe I'm being a little too sensitive, but it will be the first time I'll have been accused of that.
There's a profound new awareness of just how mean our enemy is, of just what a bunch of thugs they really are. Up to now, they were portrayed as misguided souls that might be being mistreated in a prison. Now? Whatever they get, they deserve. They have confirmed how rotten to the core they are because they've killed a journalist who wasn't taking up arms. Although we did have Geraldo admitting he worked with the U.S. government in a drug sting and that (his feelings on your right to own a gun aside) he packs heat in Afghanistan. That endangered all journalists, I believe.
The Wall Street Journal and any other news organization is always going to assign journalists to risky spots on the front lines. I can't believe that the media truly didn't know what we're dealing with in this current enemy before Pearl's death. They seem to have been awakened by this, and to no longer be acting in their usual manner.
The media's reaction is that it Pearl's death was so brutal, they're not reporting the details. But the brutality of the death of others doesn't stop them from rolling tape, does it? An e-mailer to my super-secret Rush 24/7 subscriber address reminded me that the media has no trouble showing U.S. soldiers being dragged through the streets in Somalia, either. Has the brutality factor stopped them from replaying video such as the collapse of the Twin Towers over and over and over? Of course not. We're told then we have a "right to know" when they show us those kinds of footage, which some have described as "snuff films."
So maybe we should see the video, if only to remind us of their evil. A friend of mine sent me an e-mail saying, "When the emotion of this dies down, I think the video of this ought to be played for the American people. It would bring home just who we're up against, so that people never forget that this is who our enemy is." He equated it to making sure that we don't forget the Holocaust by showing video of the camps.
The media shows the video of American forces liberating the camps of National Socialism, as they should, so why not show this video. I don't know if "hypocrisy" is the right word, but there is definitely a double standard.
Nine degrees of what, do you think?
"3 of my mates"
The only mates you ever had were your 'ands, luvy.
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