The MSM think they have very exquisite sensibilities when it comes to Muslims and Islam, and in a sense that is true. The NYT, for example, couldn’t bear to call UNC terrorist Mohammed Taheri-azar a Muslim in its story (via MM), or mention that he said he mowed the people down to “avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.” Tony Blankley notes other examples of this sensitivity, including the euphemistic characterization of the French riots last year as perpetrated by “youths,” and the refusal of the MSM to call the terrorist attack at the El Al counter at LAX a terrorist attack. Similarly, it apparently was not of interest to the MSM that the terrorist behind the largest successful attack in the US since 9-11, John Allen Muhammed, registered his Blue Caprice of Death on September 11, 2002 at precisely the time when the planes hit the WTC the year before. In their most famous and craven recent moment of sensitivity, the MSM have almost unanimously refused to show the Mohammed cartoons.

When it came to the war in Iraq, the MSM chose the Vietnam template as their preferred perspective, displaying their sensitivity to the Islamists. Their effort was to portray the Bush administration as incompetent, and the war as a failure. The chosen vehicle to do so was a car bomb or suicide attack conveniently timed so that it could appear on the evening news. They gave the Islamist media bureau the lead story nearly every night, for them to stage car bombs or orchestrate the execution of an Iraqi election worker so that photographers would be present. Everyone has observed that for several years now the MSM have typically led the news from Iraq with the day’s body count and the numbers of attacks by “insurgents.” No doubt that 20 Iraqis and 3 American soldiers killed is news; that 50 Americans are murdered in the US each day is news too, but does it lead the news day after day after day?

When the story was just about Iraq, the MSM could set the following template: the Bush administration is responsible for the deaths of many innocent Iraqi citizens because of its incompetent planning and execution of the war. Moreover, US soldiers are known to have been involved in abuse and torture, and in any event, the terrorists were not in Iraq until the lying Bush and his WMD talk bungled America into the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s all Bush’s fault. Hmmmm, the MSM perhaps sound like the leading figures of one of our two great political parties, do they not? Those themes ran through 2003, the MSM and Democrat campaign of 2004, and right up to Jack Murtha in 2005. Almost every newscast, a new bombing, a new body count, and the subtext that it was all Bush’s fault. Then something changed. The MSM lost control of the template.

The template fell apart in stages. First there was the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, a man who made clear his intentions to wipe Israel off the map and to make Jihad a global goal, well beyond anything having to do with Iraq. Next came the election of Hamas in Palestine, a crystalline moment when political power shifted to the leading group manufacturing suicide bombers, and whose charter and raison d’etre was the destruction of the Jewish state — again, nothing to do with Iraq. The final straw came with the cartoon riots. The cartoon riots not only destroyed the old media template (”Iraq is Vietnam”), but it created a new one (”Muslims are totally out of control”). Previously, the MSM had no problem whatsoever showing car bombings and suicide attacks in Iraq — such violence was the mainstay of Iraqi coverage. Despite the MSM’s senstivitiy to Islamic issues in their precious refusal to show the cartoons, they could hardly refuse to show the riots in Damascus and Beirut and in Pakistan and Indonesia and elsewhere, and the torching of embassies — these things were not only news, they were well within the scope of previous reporting. Only now the context was entirely different.

Suddenly it wasn’t about Iraq anymore. On TV Arabs and Muslims all over the world were shouting and burning things and threatening to “annihilate” this and “behead” that. Suddenly they looked crazy and primitive, mad with bloodlust about some friggin’ cartoons, for gosh sakes. Suddenly the message the MSM was sending out was not longer the controlled template that Bush is Bad, but one that fairly shouted: Muslims are nuts, everywhere you look, around the world. The MSM gave the camera and microphone to the shouting, seething Islamists, and many Americans thought: this has got to be the most unattractive religion and group of people on the face of the planet.

Not content to stop digging, the MSM chose to report violence from the bombing of the Al Askari mosque as the Fort Sumter, Antietam and Gettysburg of an Iraqi Civil War, seemingly unconscious of the new template into which this information was poured. Viewers might be pardoned for asking when seeing this on TV: somebody bombs a church and suddenly it’s a Civil War; what kind of nut cases are these people? Are they insane, or throwbacks to the Stone Age?

The MSM have brought this state of affairs on themselves. Just as they neglected to report the good news of accomplishments by the American military, they neglected to report the stories of peaceful Iraqis and Muslims trying to make their new situation work. They preferred the camera candy of the Islamists, in our view in part because it advanced their political agenda. Now they are stuck with a story line that shows Arabs and Muslims in a terrible light, but they have lost the angle that it is all the fault of George Bush.

It’s the worst of all worlds for the MSM, and it’s their own damned fault.

UPDATE

Polls show that the MSM’s appraoch is bearing fruit, via Ace.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 at 4:39 pm and is filed under General, MSM, Religion, War, idiots!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.