Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Too Many Journalists Are Cowards

Last week, the Seattle Weekly announced that Molly Norris, its editorial cartoonist, had "gone ghost." Put another way, she went into hiding. The FBI told her she had to because otherwise it couldn't protect her against death threats from Muslims she'd angered. Earlier this year, Norris started "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" to protest radical Muslims' violently stifling freedom of speech and conscience. Incredibly, her plight has drawn precious little media attention, even though it is infinitely more newsworthy than, say, a fundamentalist preacher in Florida threatening to burn Qurans...

Freedom of speech and press are in deep trouble when the American government thinks the best it can do to protect a journalist from death threats is to counsel her to go into hiding, and when the elite voices of American journalism can't be bothered to say anything in her defense. But it's actually worse than that. The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof thinks Muslims are owed an apology. "I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you," he wrote Sunday. "The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you."

Instead of telling the rest of us that we're all bigots, shouldn't Kristof and the rest of the journalism profession be outraged by what has happened to Molly Norris? And shouldn't they be angered that her government believes it cannot protect her? Imagine what they would be saying if white-hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan were threatening to kill Norris in Selma, Ala., instead of radical Muslims in Seattle. Would the FBI tell Norris she had to stop being a journalist and go into hiding? And would ASNE and SPJ look the other way as the First Amendment and freedom of the press were symbolically turned to ashes by flaming white crosses?

From the Washington Examiner.

3 comments:

maxutils said...

Did you get to see any of the drawings facebook collected? Fuh-nee. Even more hilarious was the completely humorless answer site . . . I don't get the reaction -- why should she be worried? After all, the vast majority of Muslims are peace loving people who would never harm another, and Islam is the religion of peace. Or . . .are we mistaken about that?

David Foster said...

Cowardice is one thing--not admirable, but understandable. Being a coward while thumping one's chest about how courageous one is, though, is totally contemptible. And this is the pattern for a high % of writers, artists, journalists, and professors.

allen (in Michigan) said...

Actually David it's the pattern for lefties in general and in all their issues.

Courage without risk. Generosity without cost. Arrogance without accomplishment.