Why am I not surprised that Jillian York has a "that said" sort of piece undermining the moral liberal response to the assault on Lara Logan? Her blog "Objections to Al Jazeera Aren't Really About Lara Logan" is a polemics with a Washington Post writer Jonathan Capehart -- and I hope he will not be easily bullied by either Al Jazeera or Jillian and stick to his guns, as she is too unjustifiably skeptical of his claims.
Let me step back to the context. Indeed, what happened in this entire incident is exactly why I always put the word "progressive" in scare quotes -- it's not, really so at the end of the day -- and what happened to Lara Logan is why I argue with Jillian, who is, at the end of the day, not a feminist, or champion of women's rights or even Internet freedom -- because of her politicization with leftist revolutionary politics. (The word "Marxism" may never be uttered by her lips; she may never contain the word in a single post, but I can't think of a better term for that politics that is so nakedly instrumental with various classic liberal ideas like "freedom" or "rights" and merely rents them for a time in pursuit of some revolutionary goal.)
I was surprised that NYU Center for Journalism immediately urgedNir Rosen to resign -- and he did -- because I thought the Center itself, with that other Rosen there (Jay) might be so utterly paralyzed with political correctness and progressivity that they mightnot see their way clear to doing this. They did! But it didn't finish the debate, and Rosen's responses after his departure only dig him in deeper and are only more despicable.
The story became one about insensitivity to a woman in distress who was sexually assaulted, and refusal to accept her "narrative" (as the critical and deconstructivist Marxists always describe one's "story" in a context that they always believe is layered with many truths, all dictated by economic forces).
The root of the story, however, wasn't sexism. It even wasn't Rosen's failure to feel sympathy for *women* or *women being raped*. (He seemed contrite enough about that bit of it.) No, that really isn't what it came down to, although that too, was part of it.
No, it was something completely different, something the "progressives" are constantly engaging in; something they say and do ALL the time; something that is on the Amy Goodmann Democracy Now! show 24/7, and that is this: saying that the mainstream media is guilty of the crimes of the Bush Administration; saying that the mainstream media is a "war monger" (as Nir called Lara Logan) merely because it is American; merely because it doesn't hew to the hard left line but develops a commercial, mainstream perspective.
Basically, I view the "war monger" statement as a lie; indeed, I view this as a Big Lie. I view it as a falsehood. I view it as a shrieking, tendentious, politicized caricature of politics; a Pravda cartoon, not any sort of real analysis.
I simply don't buy the line put out by the progressives that the New York Times or CBS "enabled" Bush's war or perpetuated myths or lies about it. They reported on the story as it was given. They have a responsibility to dig under stories as given. They did. They have too covered the wars. The notion that they somehow aided and abetted them is wrong. This is the stuff of miles of debate, of course, and it's an opinion that many on the left don't share, and I don't expect to make headway with them there.
You don't have to agree with me about the coverage of wars by U.S. media to understand something else about what it means when a media critic snarks that a mainstream journalist is a "warmonger.
And the substrate of this story is not relations between the sexes or sexist behaviour. It's more about political hatred. It's when Rosen came to feel that if any member of the mainstream press -- because it was a warmonger, for helping in wars -- went to report on Egypt, that he finds them in a false position of bad faith. He is so angered by this bad faith (in his view), that he is prepared to minimize any attack that happens to them; to minimize anything on their part that amounts to "doing their job" or "trying to get the story after it was gotten wrong". Had it been a black news anchor in the crowd who got beaten, he might have called him a sell-out; had it been a perfectly calibrated Arab-speaking American even of Egyptian nationality he would have called him a race-traitor. Identity was not the issue; politics were. The one category that the Soviets kept out of the Nuremberg accords was political belief -- everything else was grounds for sanctions against genocide -- not that. That was because it would have been used against them and their communist system.
The shrill invective, the awful hate that goes into calling someone harmed in a crowd as "deserving it" NOT because they are a woman; but because they are a "warmonger" just isn't being captured by the discussion of this issue. The issue has been bathed in the focus on male/female insensitivty to rape/rape survivor dynamic, and not the evil, nasty political judgementse of the hard left, maliciously ascribing to reporters for U.S. networks doing their jobs the insane notion that they are warmongers. So it was really only ever about the politics.
Of course, there's also the issue that Rosen also cynically then expects a warmonger, one representing an evil state broadcaster (or so it would seem, given the "progressive's" theory of that U.S. lapdog press), to exaggerate when she is assaulted by people who might have every right to attack such warmongers who supported their tormentors for 30 years.
So he said he might have only been "groped" like lots of women are, including (especiallly) Egyptian women themselves and she should "get over it". But he didn't minimize her suffering because he thought she was prejudiced against Muslim men (he left that low ground to be taken by Debbie Schlussel and the conservatives who think liberals "deserve" to be "mugged by Muslim violence"). He minimized it *because she was a warmonger*.
Now enter Jillian York -- she who could not cross the street to acknowledge that women's rights *might* be a teeny bit of a problem in a revolutionary Egyptian situation with the Muslim Brotherhood in the mix; she who scolded me as not being an expert because I raised this issue *legitimately* as Egyptian women raise it themselves.
So what does Jillian do? She undermines this story -- subtly -- and in sinister ways. As I'd expect by now she would. And I naturally speak out when I see such bad-faith politics in action, because I think if we don't speak out about the violence and viciousness condoned by the "progressives," if we don't speak out about the sly and despicable way in which they constantly undermine movements of human rights and social justice by condoning violence for the "higher cause" or the "end justifying the means" of some revolutionary, transfigurative power; if we don't speak out when they continue to smear the ordinary liberals of the mainstream media as evil "warmongers" imagining the state has greater powers than it does (or should have), we will get what we get: which is backlashes, which is Reagan or Bush or worse. It's important to save the soul of the left and the center; this is how you do it.
Jillian first *cunningly* uses the Internet forum-dwelling technique of seeming to acquiesce to the "concern" ("Concern troll," is what they call it when they out it on the right). Yes, brutal beating and sexual assault -- horrible, she says. Sure.
Then...zoom out to make it seem the moral equivalence that "we all" share. In this immediate situation of the circle of concern and Lara Logan -- those following the story beyond the initial news coverage to try to draw lessons and policy from it -- there's only one of us who has been assaulted, so to speak, and that's Lara Logan. It's not like Jillian York stepped out of her door and also had an equal-opportunity assault in Harvard Yard to illustrate that this "can happen everywhere". And yet, says Jilllian -- slyly undermining the specificity of this event so it "won't matter as much" -- this happens "every single day in every single country in the world" including the U.S. and "it happens all too frequently to reporters, too" who "all too infrequently" report their own experience.
Well, actually, no. I know lots of female journalists who have been all over the world. I've been on reporting trips in a number of countries in the world and haven't seen anything like what happened to Lara Long. A crowd. In a hugely significant square. During momentous events of change. Assaulted by numerous men. And having to be rescued by the police and women.
That's way different than being groped in a New York or Moscow subway as we all have been, or raped under awful situations as some have been. But...a mob scene? Lots of men in a crowd? All attacking one reporter whose role in the situation is set apart? That *is* different. That *doesn't* happen every day and didn't happen through all the tumult in Egypt, either. Christian Amanpour ran a gauntlet of men with iron rods and sticks; there have been incidents. This was something worse, and it's ok to say that. It doesn't diminish the "happens all over the world" part of it; it does *validate* that it happened there, happend now, and happened worse than normal. That's ok to say.
And sure, let's have 15 minutes of hate for Debbie Schlussel. Sure, I'm for that. It's a disgraceful racism and as disgusting as the casual minimizing that Rosen did at the get-go because of his overarching *political* hatred of Lara Logan for the caricature of what she "represented' to him as hateful warmongering imperialist blah blah blah.
Yes, it's truly *disgraceful* to wish lefties and liberals to be "mugged by reality". It's as bad as lefties minimizing the mugging by reality that does occur. Yes, it's not the only reality -- not the only "narrative" of this square (you can read Trudy Rubin, for example, about the amazing civic goodness at work in Tahrir and many others). It was in that place and that time for Lara Logan, and it's ok to say. Nobody should have to learn about multiple "narratives" and "realities" *that way* however. They don't learn; it creates backlash; it's despicable.
Rosen ascribes a social role to the media that was wrongful at the start -- he ascribes to it all kinds of powers imbued from it (ostensibly) by sharing in the power of the state and "lying about" its wars; for Schlussel, it's only the flip side, the evil lefty liberal media that is "brainwashing" us all and "ruining the republic" also has a social role -- a negative social role that perhaps the state, or well-meaning people can end. Both are narratives that won't let media be free; won't concede that establishment media is still free; won't concede that liberal media even remaining liberal is still free.
Freeer than Pravda, at any rate, and freer than Al Jazeera, the Qatar-owned station with a certain agenda (that agenda, while very much liberating and impressive, is still an agenda that at best, moral equivocates Western evils with the evils of despotic Middle Eastern regimes; at worst, ascribes the worser of the evils to the West, or accuses the West of "causing," say, by the presence of American troops in Iraq, the terrorist-caused deaths of 100,000 people -- and no, that's not an argument you will win with the "progressives," either).
Now, Concern Troll shifts to the Admit Troll, if you will. Says Jillian: "Now, let me start by saying this: Yes, Al Jazeera and all media could have reported better on Logan’s assault, using the opportunity to educate the world about what is an incredibly pervasive issue. I do think it’s okay to criticize Al Jazeera on this."
Well, wait. "All media" did kinda report on Logan's assault -- even if not in perfectly politically correct tones. ((“In a rush of frenzied excitement, some Egyptian protestors apparently consummated their newfound independence by sexually assaulting the blonde reporter” says the LA times, in the kind of thoughtless prejudice that went into Rosen's thoughtless tweet.)
So -- having Concern Troll and Admit Troll do their groundwork, here it comes, Jillian's THAT SAID:
Well, no. That is, I don't know what Capehart's agenda is, and I don't know him. But this isn't some "right-wing fight". (Capeart at the Washington Post -- now would that be a right-winger?!)
No, itt's legitimate to question why a government broadcasting system should be admitted into the U.S. It's not a casual question. One could ask this about Kremlin RTV as well (where I used to work translating for WNYC). It's one thing when you put Kremlin TV as a kind of community service on public television on Channel 25 of the city's TV station, so that it has a kind of context -- lots of other ethnic communities or foreign broadcasters are also covered on the same channel and the viewer is aware of a context of choice, and a context of public.
It's another thing to put a state-funded TV station with an agenda on mainstream broadcasting. And people don't have to be on the right to resist that. To cut a very long story short, this is a station that does not support Israel. It's a station that supports the Arabic view of Israel. Jillian herself can't see it that way as she takes an even more radical view than most leftists on this issue and supports a *one* state solution, although tacking on "with democracy and rights for all" -- without explaning how that will happen in a one-state setting.
It's not about being able to criticize Israel on TV. There's actually plenty of that and you can go watch Amy Goodmann if you feel an immediate need for this, or other commentators. There isn't a shortage of criticism and even vilitification of Israel in U.S. print and broadcast media, so to raise any artificial context otherwise is dishonest.
So it really amounts to whether the government should license a foreign state's propagandistic anti-Israel campaign in the U.S. -- even if that enterprise comes along with many good things -- critical coverage of despotic Arab regimes; coverages of brave democracy demonstrators; penetrating analysis of other world events from Sudan to Russia. It's not as if this broadcasting is *censored* in the US; we can all go watch it on the Internet. So let's not pretend, like Frank Rich hysterically screamed, that we suffer from "censorship". But it's a matter of politics. What state and what society should be forced to accommodate views hostile to its existence?
Because that's what it's about: *hostility to existence*. The U.S. as the power backing Israel; and Israel itself.
If among the many omissions this TV station with a political agenda commits is failing to cover the assault of a U.S. female reporter -- and rescue by women and soldiers! part of the interesting and much-needed aspect of this very story! -- then the problem of bias and hostility to existence is made more grave. We might hold our noses on the Israel part, right? Because we're getting lots of good coverage of the Middle East? But then, what if we're not?
Jillian writes a doctor's excuse for her friend Al Jazeera -- they didn't have footage, the story had moved. What?! This broadcaster that has had footage 24/7 from Egypt suddenly couldn't have it on *this*? Couldn't get any other local angle? Couldn't find a soldier to comment? Somebody? Logan herself wanted privacy and no more interviews. OK, what, one of the women who rescued her couldn't talk? No other women's leader, of which there are important ones in Egypt as Jillian herself writes? Huh?
And now this -- like Nir Rosen in the same spirit of vicious, malicious progressive bile:
They had no video footage. Instead, they chose not to follow the pack of US media ruminating on the Logan story like a pack of wild dogs and noted it, briefly, then moved on.
Well, actually, that's not the case. News channels covered it normally. Some ruminated; wild dogs might have been found in blogs, but not really on the air. U.S. broadcasting isn't a pack of wild dogs, Jillian, come now, what is wrong with you; they've tried to keep up on Egypt. Newspapers can't be accused of this, certainly; they have had many thoughtful stories.
But for Jillian -- like Nir Rosen -- the media itself is a lapdog (or a wild dog) for the state; for corporations; for the evil conglomerates that Keep Us Oppressed, right? (The task, then, is to "take it over" in order to "liberate" it).
And now we come to "Moral Equivalency Troll". "It happens everywhere; they cover it everywhere; the U.S. wild-dog press doesn't cover it everywhere; therefore Al Jazeera is superior.
Al Jazeera’s coverage of systematic rape from the Congo to the US military–has been excellent, at times better than coverage from equivalent outlets in the United States. And just as Capehart “proved” that Al Jazeera hadn’t covered Logan’s story well on their website, a quick Google search for “sexual assault” and “rape” within Al Jazeera’s English site shows stories like “Rape Threat Stalks Kenya’s Slums,” and “Rape Rampant in US Military”
This all may be true; I don't trust Jillian as a researcher on this now that I've seen her capable of mischaracterizing the expected and normal coverage of this assault on the network TVs as "wild dogs". Let's assume that US TV doesn't cover Kenya -- it's not important enough, regrettably, for the corporate broadcaster and for Al Jazeera's worldview and agenda as a state's political operation, it is.
But...why would two wrongs make a right? The U.S. missed a story; and through the miracle of the great balancing scales in the sky, it is now "ok" for Al Jazeera to miss a story about an attack on a U.S. supporter in Tahrir Square?! I mean, with all due respect to the rapes in Kenyas slums and the rapes by U.S. soldiers -- these are garden perennials, and they are not emblematic of the tragedy of the U.S. supporting Mubarak, and now the perilous opportunities for trying to create something new post-Mubarak. It's not that the rape of a blond woman in Egypt is "more important" than a Kenya slum survivor's assault; it's not that the rape by Egyptians is "worse" than the rape by a U.S. soldier.
The news is about judgement, however, whether we like it or not. It *is* about context and judgement. One of the exasperating things of the UN Press Center, for example, is that it can't make news judgements and context judgements -- or rather, must make them as anodyne and bland as possible -- so that a session on the Law of the Sea for Land-Locked Nations and the list of Explanations of the Vote After the Vote in the Third Committee debate about aging are sequenced before, oh, the Secretary's expression of concern about violence in Cote d'Ivoire and Kyrgyzstan. You have to dig -- and dig past many many things. "It's always the anniversary of something," as the old news room saying has it.
So yes, it's about political context -- the story played out as a political story with many more layers than would ever play out about a rape in a slum, more's the pity. Jillian knows that, which is why she is grumping now; Al Jazeera knows that, which is why it was silent. We all know that.
But Jillian goes off the rails then completely. Having run the chimes on Concern Troll, Admit Troll, Moral Equivalence Troll, she knows winds up the pitch for Outrage Troll.
Did the Washington Post, for which Capehart writes, cover the story of Colombian journalist Jineth Bedoya, who in 2000 was raped, kidnapped, and beaten while doing her job? (Hint: the answer is no).
Sigh. No, Jillian, it didn't. BTW, the New York Times did.
And the Post, while late on the story from 2000, did cover it in 2001:
Not perfect, but not the indictment of that "wild dog," that "warmonger" media Jillian imagines.
Again, it's that "progressive" assignation to the media of a social role; it's that outrage and spleen at media not *doing the job of a perfectly-pitched political operative* that so goads the Nirs and Jillians of the world.
And that's what's wrong. That's what has to be fundamentally challenged or we will not have free media nor the free society that relies on media, even as it cannot expect to assign it roles in revolutionary struggles. And sometimes it takes an NGO to get this press coverage, albeit belatedly, but the moral of the story isn't to turn the media into an NGO.
Jillian ends with a rage coda -- Rage Troll:
Capehart could have used his column to point out how common brutality toward female journalists is. He could have discussed the sexual harassment faced by Egyptian women daily. Instead, he chose to smear Al Jazeera, adding to the cacophony of American voices protesting Al Jazeera’s entree into the US media scene. We should be asking why.
Well, slow down there, Jillian, it's about news judgements; it's about the story. The story was about a woman raped in the square where all the eyes of the world are turned. The Whole World's Watching, Jillian. Why isn't Al Jazeera? Why aren't you?
Answer: Jillian doesn't really think the media should be free to cover the story. The story is whatever politically-correct and chosen singularity she and her tribe conceive -- the "line" of the endless narrative of the oppressor and the oppressed, starring Evil Amerika and Noble Third World Man.
P.S. In case this comment is not published on Jillian's blog:
Disgraceful, Jillian. Ringing the chimes through Concern Troll to Admit Troll to Moral Equivalency Troll to Outrage Troll to just plain Rage Troll.
Thank God for Jonathan Capehart, who has accurately called out a huge gap -- and myopia -- in Al Jazeera's coverage -- and no, it is not just the problem of one story as anybody who watches it for any length of time who isn't in the "progressive" magic circle can tell you.
Honestly, bad faith all around from you once again -- can you never concede such a thing as news judgement, and the freedom of the media to cover it without fear or favour?!
For one, the New York Times covered the story of the rape of Jineth Bedoya back in 2000, as did other papers, so it wasn't the silence of the complicit evil mainstream media that you imagine that fails in its PC duties. For another, the Post even covered the issue too, albeit later. That isn't to say Bedoya was well served; she wasn't. But neither is Lara Long in your hands, nor truth in journalism, for that matter.
Happy to write another 3,000 words to explicate just where you "progressives' go so terribly wrong, and why we have to care.
http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2011/02/jillian-yorks-objections-to-capehart-arent-really-about-media-freedom.html
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