A shareholder in New York Times stock told Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and other officials at the company's annual meeting last week, "You’re willing to offend the Catholics because they’re not going to come and kill you.”
Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid reported Wednesday:
At the same time, he justified the placement of an anti-Catholic ad in The New York Times by saying, “We take political ads that we do not agree with. That is the nature of advocacy advertising.”
Representing Accuracy in Media, a shareholder in the company for the purpose of getting access to the annual meetings, I told Sulzberger, his executives and other Times shareholders, “You’re willing to offend the Catholics because they’re not going to come and kill you.”
The full-page, anti-Catholic ad ran on March 9 under the title “It’s time to quit the Catholic Church” and was sponsored by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. It showed a cartoon of a Catholic Bishop going berserk over a birth control pill and urged Catholics to leave the church.
NewsBuster Rusty Weiss commented about this at his blog The Mental Recession:
The media is willing to report negatively about other religions, but refuse to cast a negative shadow on Islam. And fear is the overwhelming factor.
What the media should be doing is an introspection, asking themselves why they are afraid of offending Muslims. When they find that answer, maybe they can more accurately report on the events involving Islamic extremists.
In reality, I'm not sure fear is the overwhelming factor in this decision.
When Comedy Central caved to Islamist pressure by pulling a show that mocked Muhammed two years ago, that was out of fear.
But the media in general are just Judeo-Christian haters, and with the exception of HBO's Bill Maher aren't as hostile to other religions.
When it comes to Islam, their sensitivity is part of the peculiar respect they feel terrorists need to be accorded.
Most of these folks believe the 9/11 hijackers attacked America because of what we "imperialist stooges" have done in the Middle East.
Don't forget that most of the media see the Palestinians as the wronged party in their war with Israel.
As such, sensitivity to Islam is part of the "Blame America First" doctrine most in the press adhere to.
The fear of being killed for not playing by the rules of radical Islam just helps reinforce their decision.
