While driving around on Friday, February 22 earlier this year, I listened to every news channel. Our embassy was torched in Kosovo by radicals on that day. The media did not describe the violence as religiously motivated nor name any religious community as the culprit. I believe that was the right approach on the part of the media.
But I wondered: had those radicals been Muslims, what kind of demonization would mainstream conservative commentators like O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh have engaged in?
The war in Iraq
As the Bill Moyers Journal's special edition program, "Buying the War," compellingly demonstrated, the mainstream American media uncritically accepted the administration's claims about Saddam Hussein's ambition to acquire nuclear weapons and his links to Al-Qaeda. The five chapter report speaks for itself.
Had the media stood their ground, perhaps our administration would not have engaged in policies that have resulted in the deaths of over half a million Iraqis as per the figures provided by the medical journal Lancet estimate, 4,000 of our men and women, and a cost of anywhere from 1 to 2 trillion dollars.
Was their inability to ask the right questions of the administration not a colossal blunder on the part of the mainstream media?
Mike Ghouse is a writer and activist based in Dallas. He runs the blogs Foundation for Pluralism and World Muslim Congress.
But I wondered: had those radicals been Muslims, what kind of demonization would mainstream conservative commentators like O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh have engaged in?
The war in Iraq
As the Bill Moyers Journal's special edition program, "Buying the War," compellingly demonstrated, the mainstream American media uncritically accepted the administration's claims about Saddam Hussein's ambition to acquire nuclear weapons and his links to Al-Qaeda. The five chapter report speaks for itself.
Was their inability to ask the right questions of the administration not a colossal blunder on the part of the mainstream media?
Mike Ghouse is a writer and activist based in Dallas. He runs the blogs Foundation for Pluralism and World Muslim Congress.
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