USA Today Editor Disingenuously Defends Terrorist Propaganda
Brian Gallagher, editor of USA Today’s editorial page, has completely — and, it almost seems, willfully — misinterpreted the objections to the paper’s having published the apologia for censorship and terrorism by the “radical Muslim cleric” Anjem Choudary. In any case, he misinterpreted my objections, posted on Romenesko on Thursday, though I don’t know for sure whether he was responding in part to me in particular.
He writes that the “view” held by Choudary “needs to be understood and countered.”
I agree wholeheartedly, and I never said anything different, nor did anybody else that I saw, other than perhaps the Fox News-addled knee-jerker types and the secret, and not-so-secret, anti-Muslims looking for clues of media bias. (I’m always amused by people complaining about how liberals and the media are biased in favor of radical Islam — the most illiberal, censorship-happy worldview on earth.)
He continues: “Yet our critics argue that the appropriate response is to blind ourselves. Hear no evil, see no evil, and all will be well.”
Gallagher is trying to argue with a strawman here, but sadly, I and his other critics are made of meat, and are thus able to correct him. He didn’t say which “critics” lodged that idiotic argument. It would have been helpful if he had, assuming those critics exist. I don’t think they do.
And here’s yet more repetition of the same simplistic point: “Ignorance is not bliss, and the long contest against extremist Islam will not be won by donning blindfolds. As Sun Tzu said, ‘If ignorant of both your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.’”
I mounted no objection whatsoever to USA Today or any other news organization examining the points of view of radical fundamentalists. We need much more examination of all aspects of the Islamic world, and of all varieties of radical fundamentalism (including those of Western origin, including the radical political fundamentalism that is gaining strength in the United States). We lack understanding of all of them. My objection was to the fact that USA Today agreed to publish propaganda from a person spouting nonsense. In this case, nonsense in support of censorship and victim-blaming, and verging on support of murder and terrorism. An op-ed criticizing USA Today’s stance on Social Security reform is one thing. This is another. It seems to me that the metrics for acceptance should be radically different depending on the topic at hand. Judiciously and wisely applying those metrics is the job of an opinion editor.
If USA Today had run a huge news story on its front page, accompanied by a big picture of this guy, fairly and dispassionately examining his ideas, from all sides, in full context, it would have drawn lots of enraged responses from people accusing the paper of “promoting” him and his goofy ideas. But no such response would have come from me. Assuming it were well executed, I would have loved it. That would have been journalism. Or if the editorial page had run an op-ed from a sane academic with expertise on radical Islam, explaining the worldviews of this cleric and others like him, and had put it in context, that would have been great, too, and it would have done way more to help people “understand” the issue than this op-ed did. But just running this guy’s op-ed is promoting him, explicitly. It’s awful propaganda, pure and simple. Just running this thing by itself is an endorsement of the notion that all opinions are equally valid. It puts this guy’s ravings on one side of a balance scale, with the original editorial on the other, all under USA Today’s imprimatur. Gallagher and USA Today explicitly presented it as a valid opinion worthy of consideration (not just examination). The fact that the editor and his newspaper disagree with the opinion doesn’t change the fact that USA Today endorsed it as valid.
Running such op-eds also makes it seem as if indiscriminate copying and pasting is a primary duty of an opinion editor — another iteration of the continued devaluation of human judgment that we see throughout the culture and especially, depressingly enough, in the news media.
Ironically, perhaps, Fox News bested USA Today on this score on Thursday. Hannity had the cleric on to debate him. I didn’t watch it, and I’m sure it was as witless and inane from both sides as it sounds, but at least Fox didn’t just have the guy on to spew his nonsense unchallenged (Fox News does that enough with its own anchors).
Part of the problem here, I think, is that op-eds don’t work online the way they did for so long in print, and many print editors don’t seem to quite understand that. Every piece of writing online must stand on its own (even if linked to opposed views). Many, probably most, of the people who read this op-ed do not subscribe to the paper, and don’t read the editorial page every day and follow its currents. (And let’s face it, hardly anyone reads editorials at all). This got passed around as a discrete piece of writing, and that indeed is exactly what it was. But even if there were no Internet, it would have been incredibly irresponsible of USA Today to run this drivel with zero context.
I would ask Mr. Gallagher: Would you run an op-ed from a flat-earther, a Holocaust-denier, or a member of NAMBLA? If not, why not? The reasoning behind your answer should apply equally as well to the op-ed you did choose to run.
