Jewish World Review Oct. 15, 2001 / 28 Tishrei 5762

Clarence Page

Clarence Page
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports

Self-censorship rises again


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- OSAMA bin Laden's publicity hunger has raised prickly questions for America's broadcast media.

For example, would we Americans have given Adolph Hitler's speeches the live and unedited access to our airwaves that the terrorist bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization have enjoyed?

"We did!" exclaimed J. Fred MacDonald, a retired Northeastern Illinois University history professor and popular culture expert.

We did?

"Sure, we did," he told me in a telephone interview from his office in Chicago, where he archives and sells rights to old newsreels, radio tapes and other media. He then read off a list of tapes of Hitler speeches broadcast live or after a brief delay on American radio by major networks of the time.

I have heard the Hitler question raised quite a bit since National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice asked the heads of the five networks to refrain from airing unedited, prepackaged, pretaped videos put out by bin Laden and his organization.

After networks broadcast the taped diatribe by bin Laden and, two days later, a top spokesman for his terrorist al-Qaida organization, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was furious. He called the tapes, "at best, propaganda calling on people to kill Americans," and, at worst, coded messages to bin Laden's followers who would carry out such attacks.

That was a bracing charge. After all, many asked, would we have put Hitler's speeches on the air the way the networks put bin Laden on, live and unedited?

In fact, "it was not uncommon to put Hitler's rants on live with a translator," MacDonald said. "Usually it was early in the morning because of the time-zone difference."

But, like other media history experts I contacted, MacDonald could not find or recall any examples of Hitler's speeches being broadcast after the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor. After that day of infamy, Hitler's words appeared only in brief snatches in newsreels.

That's ironic. Yesterday's media were not much interested in broadcasting Hitler's speeches after the Pearl Harbor attack; today's media were not much interested in broadcasting bin Laden until after our new "Pearl Harbor," the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Maybe if we Americans had cared more about what he was up to beforehand, we could have avoided disaster.

Now we Americans are playing catch-up in our knowledge about bin Laden and his murderous movement. Yet, at the very time when we need to learn as much about this new enemy as possible, media have come under new pressure to keep him off the airwaves.

Under heavy and heated bombardment of questions from reporters, Fleischer produced no evidence or examples to support the possibility that bin Laden's tapes might contain coded messages. Nevertheless, all five networks agreed to review such tapes in the future before airing any portion.

I was not surprised at the easy cave-in. For one, bin Laden makes pretty revolting video for American audiences these days.

More important, responsible media tend to err on the side of caution when faced with conflicts over the public's right to know vs. national security hazards. Only when the wartime news turns sour does the public demand more aggressive reporting.

Major media and military leaders had a mostly cozy relationship before the Vietnam War dragged on for years longer than Washington led us to expect.

The same public that generally called on the media to back off the government during the early days of Vietnam shifted severely by early 1968. President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to run again and the public increasingly asked the media to become more aggressive in pursuing the truth about the war.

Unlike Vietnam, where reporters pretty much roamed freely, military leaders limited reporter access during our police actions in Grenada, Panama and the Persian Gulf. In the Gulf, the generals supplied enough dazzling photos and video of "smart bombs" and unerring anti-missile Patriot missiles every day to keep the media beast satisfied.

Only months after the war ended did new information indicate that our bombs and missiles were not as "smart" as we had been led to believe. But, by then, who cared? The war was over. We had yellow ribbons to take down and parades to cheer.

Today we Americans might well ask what our government does not want us to see in bin Laden's tapes. What strategic good does it do when the same speeches continue to reach millions throughout the Arab world on Al Jazeera, a popular all-news, Arab-language satellite TV channel out of Qatar?

We don't need to hear all of bin Laden's rants to get whatever point he is trying to make. But we should at least know what the Arab world is hearing. It might help us to figure out what all of the fighting is about, so we can prevent more fighting in the future.



Comment on JWR contributor Clarence Page's column by clicking here.

Up

10/12/01: Contradictions illustrate the complicated nature of the new terrorism
10/05/01: Look who's 'profiling' now
10/01/01: Don't trash liberty to save it
09/28/01: Life, love and cell phones during wartime
09/24/01: How to catch an elusive terrorist
09/21/01: The war I was waiting for
09/17/01: When rage turns to hate
09/13/01: Terror attack tests US, let's give right response
09/06/01: U.S. should have stayed and argued
09/04/01: Columbine killer's parents get upclose and personal
08/31/01: Virtual kids? Log me out
08/28/01: Two Africans, one black, one white, same fight
08/23/01: Sharpton for president
08/20/01: Shaking up the rules on keeping secrets
08/16/01: Bush's u-turn on racial goals
08/09/01: Outsider Bubba comes 'in' again
08/06/01: Not ready for 'color-blindness' yet
08/02/01: Immigration timing couldn't be better
07/26/01: Summer of Chandra: An international traveler's perspective
07/17/01: Overthrowing a régime is only the beginning
07/10/01: Big Brother is watching you, fining you
07/05/01: Can blacks be patriotic? Should they be?
06/19/01: Get 'real' about marriage
06/12/01: Amos, Andy and Tony Soprano
06/07/01: Getting tough with the Bush Twins
06/05/01: Bringing marriage back into fashion
05/31/01: "Ken" and "Johnnie": The odd-couple legal team
05/24/01: Sharpton's challenge to Jackson
05/22/01: Test scores equal (a) MERIT? (b) MENACE? (c) ALL OF ABOVE?
05/17/01: Anti-pot politics squeeze the ill
05/15/01: Was Babe Ruth black?
05/10/01: U.N.'s torture caucus slaps Uncle Sam
05/08/01: 'The Sopranos' a reflection of our times
05/03/01: 'Free-fire' zones, then and now
05/01/01: War on drugs misfires against students
04/26/01: Another athlete gets foot-in-mouth disease
04/23/01: 'Slave' boat mystery reveals real tragedy
04/19/01: McVeigh's execution show
04/12/01: Not this time, Jesse
04/05/01: Dubya is DEFINITELY his own man, you fools!
04/02/01: Milking MLK
03/29/01: The candidate who censored himself?
03/22/01: "Will Hispanics elbow blacks out of the way as the nation's most prominent minority group?"
03/19/01: Blacks and the SATs
03/15/01: The census: How much race still matters in the everyday life of America
03/12/01: Jesse is a victim!
03/08/01: Saving kids from becoming killers
03/01/01: Parents owe "Puffy" and Eminem our thanks

© 2001 TMS