The Media Are Fools

The Media Are Fools:

A great truth -- the global media has simply refused to stop and consider the question of whether they are being used by terrorists as weapons. Today's example: this story from the AP, entitled, "Extremist taunts his victims from prison."

The article explains that Eric Robert Rudolph, against whom I have a particular grudge because I lost a bet about him, has been writing pointless screeds and mailing them to a friend. The friend has a website, run in the name of the so-called "Army of God" group Rudolph claimed to represent; and the existence of that website has been tormenting the victims of Rudolph's bombings.

Here's the problem:

Nobody remembered that the so-called "Army of God" existed. Nobody was looking for the website. Nobody would have read the articles.

Thanks to the AP's story, many people will see these rants who would otherwise have been totally ignorant of their existence. The AP story says that one of the victims "is worried that Rudolph's messages could incite someone to violence against abortion providers."

Well, the odds of that just increased from "nearly zero" to "quite possibly." Those perhaps-inspiring-to-a-lunatic rants have just been drawn to the attention of millions.

Terrorist groups cannot survive, and certainly cannot win any of their goals, without the media oxygen on which they depend. The media, if they are a responsible group of people with any love for civilization, need to learn this lesson.

They need to stop being the real weapon of terrorists. They're free -- the 1st Amendment protects them. They've got to choose to stop. I don't know how to say it any plainer.

No comments: