A Response To Jeffrey Imm on the Media

By Douglas Farah

I differ with my colleague Jeffrey Imm's recent post on the so-called "mainstream media" and the war on terrorism, for several reasons. I would argue that it is not the job of the media, "mainstream" or otherwise, to devote all of its resources all the time to covering terrorism. The quality of reporting is certainly uneven (as demonstated by the the series in my old employer, the Washington Post on Muslims in the Washington area), but to think any news organization (from Fox to Air America) is going to cover every story about terrorism everywhere is simply unrealistic and wrong.

I like to read other things in the newspaper, despite making my living from terrorism issues. I guarnatee that people do not want to read every day about attacks in faraway places where people die. We do have upcoming elections, Supreme Court decisions, legislative battles, China, Africa, AIDs, other areas of the world and countless other competing and valid new interests and priorities. Having been in the business for 20 years, I feel it makes more sense to take several events and wrap them into a context people can understand and learn from. Reporting on a bombing in India every time it happens tells the readership vitually nothing. An occassional piece on the growing Jihadi influence in these movements and increased level of sectarian violence does.

But, like I said, there are other things going on in California, Montana and Maryland that people want to know about. Budgets, newsholes and and air time are finite commodities.

If people are interested and want to know there are countless sites on the web that provide that information. That is the beauty of the Internet age. The London bombing attempt has led to some really good and really awful looks at radical Islam in Europe. Every twist and turn of the legal battles now are not news here, and stories blowing open the current investigations there would lead to us all yelling about wrongful use of intelligence. It can not be all ways all the time.

Another factor: If the president or leaders of Congress and elsewhere seriously tried to educate the American public on this, it would be covered.

Could the media do a better job? Absolutely. All of it, from crackpots on the web spreading lies and disinformation to the Washinghton Post and New York Times who can ignore history and serious analysis, to television (both cabel and network) who cheapen stories, cut budgets and make a hash out of reality. But it is not the quantity of coverage that will change anything, it is the quality. So would intelligent political discourse aimed at teaching people what the threat is, where it comes from and why it is a threat. The unwillingness of the political class of almost all persuasions (mainstream political parties?) to define wahhabism, taught with billions of dollars flowing from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, as an enemy. The madrasas that teach hate and how to kill, are the enemy. Those that tolerate that or advance that agenda here and in Europe are the enemy, not moderates adept at using the English language. But no one says that, and therefore reporting on the public discourse yields little of this to the general public.

Finally, I don't understand the much-used term mainstream-does it apply to Fox, O'Reilly and Rush and others who are now dominant in their catagories, or just newspapers who tend to be viewed as more liberal? Is it print, radio and networks, or cable? How is mainstream measured-viewership and listenership-then the conservatives dominate it. If it is the newspapers, then it tends to be pretty much down the middle. Or is the phrase a shorthand for writing that is disliked that appears in a place where others are likely to read it?

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