{"id":1377,"date":"2015-01-08T21:15:48","date_gmt":"2015-01-09T04:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sebersole.wordpress.com\/?p=1377"},"modified":"2015-01-08T21:15:48","modified_gmt":"2015-01-09T04:15:48","slug":"dont-shoot-the-messenger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/dont-shoot-the-messenger\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Shoot the Messenger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newspaper headlines this morning provide another grim reminder that terrorism by Islamic extremists is often directed at media outlets and media professionals who dare to poke them in the eye. What constitutes a “poke in the eye” is partly the issue. In this particular case, employees of a satirical magazine\u00a0that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad were executed in a military-style attack<\/a> by gunmen with possible links to al-Qaida.<\/p>\n

It may be difficult for Westerners to understand how a religious insult escalates to this level of hatred and violence, but we certainly have no shortage of examples. You may remember the Benghazi attack that resulted in the death of our ambassador to Libya and two of his security detail. That attack, and widespread rioting in the Middle East, was blamed on the YouTube release of a controversial movie produced in\u00a0the US.\u00a0In 2005 a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the prophet leading to widespread riots and \u00a0violence in Muslim countries. And the year before, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered for his film Submission<\/em>, which took a critical look at\u00a0the treatment of women in Muslim culture.<\/p>\n

Adding insult to injury, a\u00a0guest\u00a0oped<\/a>\u00a0in today’s edition of USA Today,<\/em>\u00a0by radical Islamic cleric Anjem Choudary, suggests that the French newspaper had it coming and blamed the victims for their own fate.<\/p>\n

The Social Responsibility model of the press, and the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution, call for a very different response to speech that may offend.<\/p>\n

According to an editorial published in today’s\u00a0Pueblo Chieftain<\/em>,<\/p>\n

It is both a fundamental right and a sacred duty of newspapers to consider and publish all opinions and angles of a news story, including those that are unpopular with certain readers. Any attack on this right is an attack on the very foundation of a free press.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unfortunately this\u00a0story, like life itself, it’s a bit more complicated than first appears. Journalism, the kind the 1st Amendment was designed to protect, is morphing into something that might be unrecognizable to our founding fathers.\u00a0Charlie Hebdo<\/em>, the satirical French magazine that was attacked today, should\u00a0not be compared to\u00a0Time <\/em>magazine, The Guardian,<\/em> or Le Monde<\/em>. Don’t get me wrong,\u00a0the actions of the radical terrorists is inexcusable…it was brutal, repugnant, and evil, and I am in no way offering a defense of their actions. But I’m also not ignoring the fact that news organizations (and pseudo-news organizations)\u00a0are increasingly engaging in activities that are not entirely defensible under the old rules of engagement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Newspaper headlines this morning provide another grim reminder that terrorism by Islamic extremists is often directed at media outlets and media professionals who dare to poke them in the eye. What constitutes a “poke in the eye” is partly the issue. In this particular case, employees of a satirical magazine\u00a0that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad were … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Don’t Shoot the Messenger”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1st-amendment","category-global-media","category-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}