I have never been impressed with #Mika Berezniki’s defense of liberal values on Morning +Joe (MSNBC); however, this morning she did pose what I thought was a pertinent question. Some people accuse the media of being part of the problem when it comes to terrorist stimulated events. What interpretation are we to give to this? She acknowledged the media are obliged to cover news events such at the café hostage situation in +Sydney Australia. She pointed out the obvious dilemma; if they are obligated to report, what is happening, how should do it.
A few minutes before she made this statement, Joe Scarborough said, in his usual declarative manner, “the terrorist is a Muslim”. Looked at in the simplest way, is probably true. However, I listened to +President Obama for several years now talk about certain radical elements in the Muslim world, who are terrorists. He pointed out that not all 1.2 billion Muslims are terrorists but only a very, very small subset of them at one time identified as al Queda but “we” now identify as ISIS. I consider what Scarborough said was a deliberate and calculated attempt to undermine Obama and not to reach a solution to a serious problem. Joe is a smart man and cleverly uses his position as a TV show host to promote his brand of conservatism with their incredible lynch pin of groundless “hate everything Obama”. In saying what he said, he supports ISIS whether he wants to or not.
I base this on knowing that Joe did not know if he was a terrorist, demented individual, disgruntled employee, or a Muslim or anything else. By his choice of words, he made it clear he is actually promoting the desires of ISIS among his listeners. Clearly, ISIS leaders want the world to identify “them” as the leaders of all Muslims and to pit the entire Muslim world against the entire Christian world. They want President Obama to deal with a small group or gang of radicals, as a sovereign state and not for what they really are: a small group of religious driven radicals. They have been successful in getting the weak minded among us, our own religious and politically driven minority group, to lead the fight in such nonsense as banning religious symbols, burkas, and other manners of dress and conduct across the Christian world.
President Obama’s “divide and concur” strategy will work if we join him in achieving his objective. The only way this can happen is if the news media understand this and joins in these efforts. Ours is a free nation; if an individual news analyst believes that all Christians should have a war with Islam, they have a right to say it. However, so does Joe, whose objective of hate is counter productive to this strategy. I do not want to imply that Scarborough is not a patriotic American because he is.
In addition to the line of reasoning presented above, the police asked the news media not to release the identity of the terrorist. Immediately reporters, I assume thousands of them, began searching everything they could think and doing it in every way possible to make that identification. We can all understand that, however as soon as the found verifiable bits of information, they released it. The maintained the integrity by not using the person name but each one begins to release did release—as career building “scoops”—bits of his background information such as address and criminal records, which soon resulted in publication of the man’s identity. This information warns all people associated with him to hide or destroy evidence of their association with him. Any attempt by the police to investigate puts them in competition with this massive power of the news media.
Mika’s pointing out this dilemma is good; as difficult as it is sometimes, freedom of speech has merit, even in the interior competitive world in which the media operates, as exemplified by the conflict between the police and the media. On the other hand, Joe Scarborough is clearly wrong.
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