January 10, 2015

Most Western media refusing to show cartoons that prompted Paris attack

From The Federalist:
In reporting on the executions in Paris, Western news organizations are falling all over themselves to censor images that have angered Muslim terrorists.

This is the "murderers' veto":  Because Muslims kill people who offend their delicate feewings, western media self-censor to avoid risk.

Which brings us to CNN.  Following the Charlie Hebdo attack, CNN allegedly issued a memo to staff detailing what types of images and words would be allowed by the network and what would be banned:
Although we are not at this time showing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet [sic] considered offensive by many Muslims, platforms are encouraged to verbally describe the cartoons in detail. This is key to understanding the nature of the attack on the magazine and the tension between free expression and respect for religion.

Video or stills of street protests showing Parisians holding up copies of the offensive cartoons, if shot wide, are also OK. Avoid close-ups of the cartoons that make them clearly legible.

It’s also OK to show most of the protest cartoons making the rounds online, though care should be taken to avoid examples that include within them detailed depictions of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.
Where to begin?  For starters, note that the network is apparently afraid of even using the word Muhammad. Instead CNN refers to him as “the Prophet.”  Not a prophet.  Not even the prophet.  But “The Prophet,” capital P.

CNN’s language implies that no other prophets existed before or after Muhammad.  As if he's the only one. 

Does CNN refer to Jesus Christ as “the Messiah”?  Does it spell God “G-d” out of respect for Jews who believe it is sinful to utter His name?  Of course not.  They defer only to Islam, because Muslims have repeatedly shown--literally thousands of times--that they will kill people who don't defer.

CNN--supposedly a television network--instructed its employees to avoid the use of pictures and instead use words to describe the cartoon images that presumably moved Muslims with machine-guns to execute ten unarmed civilians and two unarmed policemen.

It's a situation loaded with irony: CNN is a TV network, and the unique aspect of TV is the ability to show images.  Unless you’re CNN. And how did CNN justify its ban on pictures?  They said it was necessary because verbal descriptions were "key to understanding the nature of the attack on the magazine and the tension between free expression and respect for religion.”

CNN wants us to believe the key to understanding a murderous attack over cartoon images is to…only use spoken words to describe the images, rather than showing the actual images.
C.S. Lewis saw this nonsense coming--how the deliberate corruption of language leads inexorably to the degradation of society. We are seeing it now:  Maybe if we in the Mainstream Media call Mohammed “The Prophet” and sneer at non-Muslims under our breath, murderous Muslims will leave us alone and instead attack those less enlightened than we are. 
ABC/CNN's Christiane Amanpour called the killers "activists."  (Click on the link for the exact quotes below.)
AMANPOUR (on the day of the massacre): On this day, these activists found their targets, and their targets were journalists.

Editors worrying, not about terrorism but about right-wing reaction to terrorist attacks:

NICHOLAS KRISTOF (on MSNBC the day of the executions): I think [the magazine's staff] should have been more sensitive.  I don't believe in gratuitously offending people.  They practically forced those poor masked fellows to kill them.  [Last sentence may have been garbled in transmission.]

KRISTOF again (on MSNBC, same day): We have to be really, really careful not to respond to the extraordinary intolerance of these jihadis with our own intolerance.  And by "extraordinary intolerance" I mean those fellows with the scary guns were...um...never mind."

DAVID ROTHKOPF (again, MSNBC on the day of the executions): I think we have to be just as worried about the reaction to the attack from nationalists, from right-wingers, from people who have sought to drive this wedge, as it was described earlier, between the Islamic communities and the mainstream communities in Europe.  Because if not for the people who have sought to drive this wedge between the peaceful Muslim community and the rest of Europe, the savage, intolerant cartoonists would hardly be dead at all.

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