Responsible Journalism

For those who have been reading my blog, you know that I have not typically discussed topical issues. However, the short article in Newsweek compels me to say something about responsible journalism.

Since when did journalism consider one uncorroborated source as sufficient to run a story? And, more, what on earth was Newsweek thinking? Do they not realize that there are consequences to the kind of story they ran?

The Koran is the holy book of Islam. Every copy is considered to be completely holy, and cannot be destroyed or disrespected. We in the West do not truly understand this, since the Bible, the Christian holy book, is not considered holy in quite the same way. It is the ideas, not the book proper, that is holy for Christians. For Moslems, it is the very book itself that is holy, because it contains the word of God. This is something we need to be aware of, so we do not do anything disrespectful to the Koran. We cannot be ignorant of others' cultures. We are not alone in the world.

Thus, anyone in the military caught desecrating the Koran should be punished. Our government, precisely because of the First Amendment, should show nothing but the utmost respect for all religions, religious practices, and religious objects. Our military has had a history of respecting historical and religious sites and has typically gone out of its way not to even damage these sites during a war. At the same time, while those of high military rank have tried to respect such sites, we need to make sure that all of our troops understand this policy.

At the same time, Newsweek acted highly irresponsibly on several levels -- not just the level of reporting something given to them by one source. The editors of Newsweek also acted irresponsibly in reporting the incident at all, since reporting such an incident was bound to have at minimum the outcome it has actually had so far -- riots in some Islamic countries. If we assume the best, this means that the editors at Newsweek were completely ignorant of the importance of the Koran to Islam -- meaning they had no idea what the consequences of their actions would be. If we are considerably less generous, and propose that it was reported in order to harm the President's image in the world, then the editors of Newsweek are responsible for purposefully putting the U.S. in danger of going to war with all 1.5 billion Moslems. I propose both extremes, since it is difficult to say if either, or something inbetween, is the truth of the matter.

While Newsweek and every other news outlet has the First Amendment right to publish anything they want, without legal consequences, they need to be more responsible in what they choose to publish, since what they publish could result in hundred, thousands, or -- if what they reported were to result in a war with all of Islam -- millions of people dying. And if the U.S. system were to collapse because of a sustained war with 1.5 billion people, then Newsweek and other news outlets would most likely find themselves in a system where it would be illegal to publish certain things -- as is the case in most countries in the world. The freedom to do something does not mean that you always SHOULD do something. When a news outlet considers publishing something, they should consider the outcome of what they report. It is no conincident that when the news reports high school shootings, that more high school shootings occur -- when they report child abductions, more abductions occur. Reporting crimes results in copycat crimes. Does this mean that we should remain blissfully ignorant of the world? Of course not. The news does have a responsiblity to report newsworthy events. But the fact is, we are ignorant of the world -- and when the kind of ignorance the editors at Newsweek exhibited occurs, the outcome is anything put blissful. The news outlets need to become less ignorant of the world before they go around reporting on it. When they do, their reporting will become more responsible -- and more coherent -- than it is. And perhaps they will even report on the things that matter -- international news -- rather than on much of the irrelevancies that happen in the U.S. (Michael Jackson, the crime de jour that gets extended to several weeks or months, etc.). And we would also not have ignorant people like Lou Dobbs on CNN spreading his complete ignorance of economics to the U.S. as if he were an expert in the field. He isn't. And CNN is equally irresponsible for giving such a person his own show to talk about a field he clearly knows nothing about.