Censorship

When President Bush receives protests as he travels abroad, it’s front-page headline news. Yet, when former Vice President Al Gore is so protested, the media couldn’t care less.

Although the Associated Press did report Gore’s visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to speak at a biofuels conference Friday, virtually no American media outlet picked up the story:

As Gore spoke, outside the hotel demonstrators on bicycles and wearing surgical masks chanted slogans against multinational agribusinesses, saying the biofuel boom will cause deforestation and turn arable land into deserts.

Sadly, there wasn't a lot of details in this piece about the actual protests. Thankfully, I received the following La Nacion article by e-mail yesterday with a translation that offered a lot more insights into the matter:

 

The big story of the week has been "Mullah Mouse," the hate-spewing Palestinian children's character whose show on Hamas television encouraged kids to kill non-Muslims to help establish world Islamic domination.

You would think that CNN would have wanted to get in on some of that news. It's controversial. The visuals are great and it's eminently topical.

The network did finally cover the story (saying the mouse "reaches out" to children as Ken Shepherd reported yesterday) but the day before, Headline News host Glenn Beck was thwarted in his attempts to cover the story, all over some minuscule nit-picking in the translation. CNN's politically correct staff stopped him from making the report over a single word. Beck discussed the problem on his radio show Wednesday. Click the video above to watch his story. (Hat tip: LGF)

Following the election of conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy to France's presidency, there have been a series of riots from angry protesters upset at his victory. Unfortunately, it's a little hard to know much about the rioters due to the French government's passing a law that makes it a crime to report on riots unless you are a professional journalist:

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.

The council chose an unfortunate anniversary to publish its decision approving the law, which came exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday on the night of March 3, 1991. The officers’ acquittal at the end on April 29, 1992 sparked riots in Los Angeles.

Over the weekend, Al Gore caused somewhat of a stir down in San Antonio for refusing to allow the media to cover a speech he was giving to architects who are also adherents to his global warming gospel.

Thankfully for open dialogue, a reporter for the San Antonio Express-News crashed the party. Unfortunately for reasoned dialogue, the reporter, Anton Caputo, failed to report the event with any sort of skepticism, almost falling over himself to praise the veep-turned-envirovangelist.

Playing equal parts visionary, cheerleader and comedian, Al Gore brought his message of how to fight global warming to a capacity crowd of receptive architects Saturday in San Antonio.

The former vice president referred continually to a "new way of thinking" that is emerging in the country and offered hope in the battle to control the effects global warming will have on the planet.

How often in the past couple of years as the antiwar voices in the media have gotten louder and more visible have you seen a report about the supposedly poor condition of the American military and troubles with recruitment?

So often that it's nauseating, right?

Well, with virtually no fanfare from a press with a clear agenda, the Army National Guard reported in April that it had achieved a goal it had not been able to attain since 1999.

As reported by the National Guard Bureau (h/t Glenn Reynolds, emphasis added throughout):

CBS Radio might be about to get a very expensive lesson in contract law, for terminated former “shock-jock” Don Imus has just hired topnotch legal counsel in what could be the most-watched trial since O.J. Simpson’s.

As reported by Hollywood Today (h/t Glenn Reynolds, emphasis added throughout):

Don Imus is suing CBS Radio for more than $40 million. He is suing for vindication, according to a media expert, who said “(Imus) wants his name cleared.”

The former talk show host hired one of the country’s top First Amendment trial lawyers to sue CBS for firing him over racial and sexual on-air comments. But Imus points out his contract calls for “irreverent” and “controversial,” and his “nappy-headed ho” remark was certainly that.

Hmmm. That was in the contract? It appears CBS somehow forgot:

 Over the past few days, Gates of Vienna discussed a very troubling story about Finnish blogger Mikko Ellila, “who has been summoned by the police for a hearing next week, all because of the content of his blog posts.” Mikko posts in Finnish but contacted several people in English about this, such as the Australian blogger Prodos, who owns the site that hosts the potentially criminal blog.  Mikko explained to Prodos why he is going to be questioned by Finnish police:

According to the letter, I am suspected of “hate speech” merely
 because I have pointed out that Islam is a fascist ideology that
 advocates killing Jews, atheists, homosexuals etc.

 Fellow Finnish blogger Vasarahammer explained more about Mikko's problem:

So, did you hear about the Hamas Parliament speaker who, during a sermon on Sudanese television, called for Allah to kill all Jews and Americans?

You didn’t? Why might that be? After all, this happened about three weeks ago, was reported by Memri TV on April 13 the very same day, hit Digg on April 20, and was reported by CNSNews on April 26.

And you still didn’t hear about this?

Could there be a reason why the media ignored such an extraordinary statement by a Hamas official who happens to currently be the acting speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, or was this just an innocent oversight by a media obsessed with more important issues?

Regardless, the shocking video is available here courtesy of Memri TV, and the transcript follows (emphasis added):

Since the VT shootings in Blacksburg, Virginia, we have seen all manner of wild-eyed, anti-gunners come out of the woodwork to cynically use this crime as a chance to beat their gun grabbing drums. But, proposing that we send government Stormtroopers to smash down the doors of every home with a gun in it to confiscate their Constitutionally legal firearms is a step I haven't seen in a purportedly responsible newspaper. That is, until the Toledo Blade published a proposal for taking away our right to self-protection that included "Special squads of police" with unlimited powers to confiscate all guns. A hit squad that would traipse about the country invading homes at will and accosting peaceful citizens everywhere.

The author of this tyrannical proposal is Dan Simpson, who is described as "a retired Ambassador" and a "member of the editorial boards of The Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. " He is a former US Ambassador to various African states... which can easily be read to mean one who thinks government knows best, darn the citizen's rights, apparently.

In a typical move, Europeans want to ban something they don’t like. In an English-language article, the Danish Heise Online reported  several members of the European Parliament, which is the elected body of the European Union, will submit a draft of a declaration next week that “calls on providers in somewhat vague language to make provisions against "hate pages" part of their standard terms and conditions” with the ultimate goal to “banish racism and hate propaganda from the Internet altogether.  This is the same environment in which publishing the satirical Jyllands-Posten Mohammad cartoons (images here)was considered an act of Islamophobia, and therefore hate speech. The draft specifically mentions Islamophobia in the preamble, which would likely mean that anti-terrorism sites like Little Green Footballs, the Brussels Journal and Melanie Phillips, publisher of the book, Londonistan could be labeled "hate speech" (emphasis mine throughout):

The ultimate object of the push by five EU Members of Parliament, Glyn Ford and Claude Moraes of the UK's Labour Party, the Hungarian Liberal Party member Viktoria Mohacsi and the two German European Members of Parliament Bern Posselt (Christian Social Union; CSU) and Feleknas Uca (The Left Party), is to banish racism and hate propaganda from the Internet altogether. The preamble to the declaration mentions anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and anti-Romany campaigns. Should the providers refuse to act more forcefully the five initiators of the declaration have vowed to pressure the European Commission into drafting appropriate legislation (the article includes links to the politicians' websites).

UPDATE I and II AT BOTTOM OF POST:

Two figures, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Al Sharpton, were recently targeted with a death threat, but the media treated them very differently. An article by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that when the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown booked Hirsi Ali to speak, along with other Islamic leaders, a Johnstown Imam “tried to block" her from speaking and thinks she should be put to death. Other than the Pittsburgh article, the only news coverage of this was local. Here's a group of men who tried to prevent a woman from speaking and advocated her death, and even in a world hyper-aware of violence against women, the rest of the media ignored the situation and statements like this (emphasis mine throughout):

Imam Fouad ElBayly, president of the Johnstown Islamic Center, was among those who objected to Hirsi Ali's appearance.

"She has been identified as one who has defamed the faith. If you come into the faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death," said ElBayly, who came to the U.S. from Egypt in 1976.

A few sources, not the least of which is Michael Barone, are reporting that the Democrats are ignoring important Iraq briefings conducted by General David Petraeus in an apparent effort to stymie efforts in Iraq. It is well known that they are not supportive of the troops in Iraq and the president's "surge" plan they are currently conducting, but whether they like the plan or not, to skip these briefings is an act of blatant negligence that borders on the criminal. So where is the MSM's outrage? Why are we not being told of this Democrat negligence?

Barone, one of the best political pundits out there today, closed his recent Real Clear Politics Report with the following:

Although it goes without saying that Internet denizens of all colors, shapes, and sizes typify the concepts inherent in the First Amendment, conceivably nothing incites more ire from bloggers than out of control comments sections.

As this issue came to a head last month in the midst of the Kathy Sierra debacle – a computer programming instructor that ended up canceling speaking engagements due to death threats – a debate has ensued throughout the blogosphere concerning what should be done to increase civility without jeopardizing free speech. This has even gone so far to evoke discussions of creating a “bloggers code of conduct.”

In reality, comments sections can be so hostile that many bloggers debate the pluses and minuses of having them at all. Law professor Ann Althouse posted a deliciously comic view on this issue Saturday that is much like John Kerry’s position on funding the Iraq war (emphasis added):

As NewsBusters has reported here and here, Kathy Sierra is a programming instructor and blogger that received death threats from some of her readers back in March.

On Wednesday, NPR’s Adam Davidson interviewed Sierra to get her take on the raging hostility on the Internet. Host Renee Montagne introduced the segment (audio available here, h/t Tim Graham):

Two leading Internet figures say that blogs and online forums have gotten way too nasty. Some online posts are not only mean, they're violent, even threatening.

After receiving the baton, Davidson had a funny exchange with Sierra that illustrated the absurdity of this entire sordid affair:

The American press is so encumbered by political correctness and ignorant of Islamic doctrine that it is allowing extremist Muslims in this country to mask a hard-core ideology in minority politics. So says M. Zuhdi Jasser, a moderate American Muslim leader (h/t: LGF).

This pandering on the part of the American press (I would add international as well), is preventing the emergence of a pan-Islamic consensus to marginalize extremists like Osama bin Laden, Jasser argues. Instead, the reverse happens--criticism of Islamists gets suppressed by naive liberals who misguidedly think it's racist:

Dennis Wagner of the Arizona Republic broke the story on April 10, 2007 about PBS's censorship of the documentary, Islam vs. Islamists from its America at a Crossroads series which debuted this week. The film's producers, Frank Gaffney, Alex Alexiev and the veteran filmmaker, Martyn Burke of ABG Films, Inc. have since presented in shocking detail their painful protracted experiences trying to navigate the censors at PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which funded the film with $675,000 of the taxpayers' monies but now has chosen to shelve it. In just the last week of public debate, there has been a firestorm of outcry from the public who are demanding that oppressive methods of editorial content control by power brokers at PBS be investigated and the real story behind the shelving of Islam vs. Islamists be exposed. PBS's exploitation of the public dime and the public airwaves for the narrow point of view of the Islamist sympathizers with the exclusion of the anti-Islamist Muslims is just now beginning to be understood.

With co-host Whoopi Goldberg on the set, the ladies of "The View" continued to discuss the Imus controversy on the April 20 show. Goldberg felt strongly that Imus deserved at least a strong suspension and noted that, while all Americans have free speech, our words can still have consequences. The guest co-host then went through a long list of celebrities whose careers were damaged from inflammatory statements. Rosie responded with another one of her scary predictions and Joy Behar reacted with the "Nazi Germany" card.

ROSIE O’DONNELL: I think racist is one thing. But when people start to say this person has a dissenting political opinion, therefore we want them off the air. That's when we're in dangerous territory. That’s what I think.

From Todd Boyd, ESPN’s Page 2:

Now that disgraced radio talk-show host Don Imus has been booted, can we finally get down to some “real talk” about the multiple issues embedded in this racial theater? There is a lot to sort through here, but after a week of debate centered around “nappy-headed hos,” half-assed apologies, cries of censorship, and a curmudgeonly shock jock’s lame attempt at being funny, many pundits have moved beyond the core issue and now are talking about the perceived double standard they feel exists between what Imus said and what often comes from the mouths of rappers.

Yet Imus and hip-hop really don’t have much in common. Imus was host of a radio show that focused on the real news of the day, while hip-hop is a fictionalized form of cultural expression. Imus is real, featuring real guests and humor based on real topics. However loudly hip-hop might claim to be real, it is not real; it is a form of representation. This is why so few rappers use the names on their birth certificates when performing.

In all the media furor over fired radio host Don Imus, one fact was very rarely reported: that Imus is not a conservative. In truth, he is a moderate liberal. Aside from his stand against the Iraq war, support of John Kerry, abortion-rights, and the Democratic takeover of Congress, perhaps the biggest indicator of his liberal credentials was that liberal media elites like Tim Russert, Jonathan Alter, and Nina Totenberg appeared on his show on a daily basis.

Being in like Flynn with the left-wing media snobs didn't do anything for Imus when it came down to it, however. Many GOPers and conservative intellectuals would do well to learn this lesson. Trying to get in with the liberal media crowd (bashing fellow conservatives works best) will never earn you any protection.

Even if you're naturally a moderate conservative, it still won't earn you any respect from the far left's rage, as centrist conservative radio host Michael Smerconish is finding out. Writing at Classical Values, Eric Scheie reports:

In the wake of the Imus affair, MSNBC is airing an all-day discussion on the theme "What's OK to say?" Poet Maya Angelou appeared at 11:05 AM EDT, and in the course of her interview with MSNBC's Peter Alexander, had this exchange:

ALEXANDER: Dr. Angelou, you're an author and an artist. I guess the question is, is there a need for more censorship of our media and of our arts, are you comfortable with that? And if that happens, when does it end? What is OK to say?

ANGELOU: Exactly. I agree with that. I think the society decides upon the censorship. Each person censors himself or herself. Do you think, if any of these hip-hoppers, if they said about Mrs. Bush what they say about black women, do you think they would be given a microphone? Do you really think so? So we have to censor ourselves. And then, the society makes that decision.

View video here.

Touchy, touchy! Diane Sawyer is in the business of dishing out tough questions and challenging people's answers. But when a guest on today's "Good Morning America" politely corrected her on a First Amendment matter, the GMA host was quick to accuse him of "attacking" her.

Los Angeles-based radio talk show host Larry Elder was Diane's guest, in to discuss the Imus matter. Sawyer introduced him as a "conservative radio host" though on his own site Elder describes himself as a "libertarian" and "a blend of fiscal conservative and social liberal." Of course we all know how many times the MSM has described Al Sharpton as a "liberal" in the course of his innumerable appearances over the last week or so: that would be precisely zero, at last count.

Elder opined that Imus' punishment did not fit the crime. Imus' comment was offensive, sexist and racist, said Elder, "but he apologized, apologized again, did the obligatory beatdown tour à la Michael Richards by appearing on the Al Sharpton show, and as far as I'm concerned, that should have been enough. In the grand department store of life, Don Imus operates in the toy section and I think that those remarks should have been taken with some perspective, but they weren't."

With a clearly activist liberal Congress in place, the news Don Imus has gotten the ax and that the FCC is now beginning to look into what most likely was the Imus in the Morning Show may be more than the usual distraction in what has become a typical race flair up, egged on by the usual suspects, Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson et al.

With Representative Kucinich already talking about reconstituting the Fairness Doctrine as far back as January, a far from Conservative radio talker may have provided said Congress with just the opening it seeks. The ultimate prize the liberals in Congress are after has nothing to do with race, as always, it's about politics more than anything else.

An American tax-funded documentary, titled Islam vs. Islamists, a film on how moderate Muslims feel about the corruption of their religion by Wahhabi extremists and their experiences in facing those extremists, was axed by PBS for the very reason that it puts some Muslims in a bad light, says the film's producer in Tuesday's edition of the Arizona Republic. Rampant PCism is the charge, and it is hard to deny the claim once the whole story is put out there.

The producer of a tax-financed documentary on Islamic extremism claims his film has been dropped for political reasons from a television series that airs next week on more than 300 PBS stations nationwide.

Producer Martyn Burke claims that PBS, in order to be allowed to continue with the project, tried to make him fire some of his associates on the film because they belong to a Conservative Think Tank and that they still axed his film anyway when all was said and done.

So, what is all the fuss over with this film?

So it seems the position of left-wing Democrats is to deal with the terrorist states of Syria and Iran -- but don't deal with Fox News because it just gives them "a platform." As noted in an earlier posting, Democratic candidate John Edwards had a fine time and voiced no complaints after participating in a pair of Fox News-sponsored debates in 2003, but now he's boycotting the highest-rated cable news network: (Updates added at the end.)

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Friday pulled out of a second debate co-hosted by Fox News Channel, saying the cable network has a conservative slant.

The infighting and hostility in the blogosphere best exemplified by the recent Kathy Sierra brouhaha has led some prominent Internet denizens to push for rules that could reduce or eliminate the popular comments sections at blogs.

For those that have forgotten, Kathy Sierra is a programming instructor and blogger who last month had to cancel a speaking engagement at a technology conference in San Diego, California, due to death threats she had received at her website as well some that she had no affiliation with.

With that in mind, some folks want to do something to prevent this type of behavior in the future. As reported by the New York Times Monday (emphasis added throughout):

Barbara Walters and the folks at ABC should be very pleased with themselves, for all the recent nutty remarks by Rosie O’Donnell precipitated a discussion on Saturday’s “Forbes on Fox” about whether or not the controversial co-host of “The View” should be fired.

Though the group seemed to agree that the current “View” formula of making exceedingly shocking statements might be helping ratings, the consensus was that ABC and Disney were risking their long-term reputations by being associated with such non-stop anti-American sentiments.

As the flow of the discussion was really quite good, and host David Asman did a great job of moderating, what follows is a transcript of this segment without any interruptions or pontifications which might unnecessarily reduce your entertainment pleasure:

Imagine for a moment in the midst of the media’s current fixation with man-made global warming that Alaska experienced near-record high temperatures for the month of March. Do you think this would have been headline news, with folks like Meredith Vieira, Diane Sawyer, Charles Gibson, Brian Williams, and Katie Couric reporting the dire data with pictures of polar bears floating on broken ice flows?

Well, if the answer is a resounding “Yes,” why didn’t any of these news agencies bother sharing weather data from America’s 49th state concerning the previous month being one of the coldest on record?

As reported by the Alaska Climate Research Center (emphasis added):

A rather inconvenient truth occurred in late March that went totally unreported by the global warming alarmists in the media.

On the very day that soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore was informing Congress of the planet’s imminent doom, the Anchorage Daily News reported that this winter has been so cold there that fire hydrants are exploding.

I bet your favorite drive-by media outlet didn’t share any of this as they were falling all over themselves with sycophantic praise for the global warming alarmist-in-chief (h/t NB member dscott, emphasis added throughout):

The DC Examiner has a great editorial this morning reminding everyone of the dramatic failure that McCain-Feingold has been. Not only has it failed to remove the "corrupting" influence of money in elections, it's needlessly promoted censorship:

Well, so much for “getting rid of the corrupting influence of money on politics” — the basic aim of the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002, aka as McCain-Feingold. That’s Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive front-runner for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination who raised “only” $12.5 million during the first three months of 2007. The Arizona senator trailed far behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who raised $21 million and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani who raised $15 million, $10 million of which came in March alone. Among Democrats, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., raised $26 million, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards raised $14 million and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson raised $6 million. Sen.Barack Obama, D-Ill., has not released his figures but is estimated to have raised about $22 million. Collectively, more than $125 million has been raised by the 2008 presidential candidates in just three months, with more than nine months to go before the first primary.

Think back to the days before McCain-Feingold became law. The biggest target of the law’s backers was the estimated $500 million in soft money contributed to political parties by corporations, individuals, labor unions and others. Just last year, Fred Wertheimer and Trevor Potter, two of the most ardent McCain-Feingold supporters, charged that soft money “ultimately turned into a $500 million national scandal and disgrace.” Now it looks like the presidential primary contenders will equal or even surpass that once-scandalous threshold long before the start of the general election campaign. We know little or nothing about what was promised by the candidates in return for this unprecedented flood of cash.

As many people know, Rosie O’Donnell has landed herself in another high-profile brouhaha with yet another high-profile media figure.

In December, it was Donald Trump. Now, it’s Bill O’Reilly.

Yet, this time, her statements which precipitated the skirmish – that America may have set up the recent showdown between Iran and the captured British sailors, as well as the Bush administration being involved in bringing down the World Trade Center on 9/11 – appear to have enflamed the American people.

In fact, AOL is currently running an online poll asking the question (h/t Hot Air): "Should ABC fire Rosie, as O'Reilly implies?" The tally as of 10:00 AM EST Tuesday is: