Thursday, February 23, 2006
Dershowitz and Bennett: The Betrayal of the Press
If ever there was a non-affiliated bipartisan effort, this is one. Bill Bennett, a right-of-center talk show host (and former cabinet secretary in the Reagan administration), and Alan Dershowitz, a left-of-center lawyer, author, and law professor, have written an editorial together about the American press, and its abdication of responsibility:
We two come from different political and philosophical perspectives, but on this we agree: Over the past few weeks, the press has betrayed not only its duties but its responsibilities.If you've been reading this blog, or just about any center-right blog, you know what they're talking about: the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, and the refusal of the American press to print them.
What has happened? To put it simply, radical Islamists have won a war of intimidation.My hat's off to The Washington Post for printing it, by the way. (Or have they adopted a policy of printing words, any words, about the cartoons, so long as they don't have to print the cartoons themselves?)
[...]
When we were attacked on Sept. 11, we knew the main reason for the attack was that Islamists hated our way of life, our virtues, our freedoms. What we never imagined was that the free press -- an institution at the heart of those virtues and freedoms -- would be among the first to surrender.
Cox & Forkum had the issue nailed, almost a month ago:
American journalists need to ask themselves: am I in that cartoon? And if so, then what, if anything, should I do about it?
We are not lacking journalists with guts, to be sure. But we need more... lots more.
