| Current mood: |  annoyed |
It really does make me depressed
There are some countries in the world where people are crying out for a free press. To be able to write what they want, when they want.
We have a free press, and how do we use it?
"MUSLIM SICKOS' MADDIE KIDNAP SHOCK" - the headline from The Daily Star.
Now - what would you make of that headline? That Muslims kidnapped Madeline McCan? Cause that's what I thought when I read it.
But no, it turns out that it wasn't Muslims that kidnapped her. Or at least, not as far as the paper knows. Instead it was about someone (who they presume is a Muslim - I don't know if they have any proof or not) saying that her parents had something to do with her disappearance in a post on the internet.
Because - it seems - that whoever made this post is the only person to suggest that possibility. Aside from a few hundred other people across the country, maybe more across the world. And the police investigating the abduction. But, aside from them, clearly these "Muslims" are the only people who have said it, and so deserve a banner headline.
So why does this upset me? Let me count the ways.....
1) The headline will make people think Muslims kidnapped her. And since the average Daily Star reader has less brains than god gave a Weasley, I suspect that they won't think "It was one or two Muslims" - they will think "MUSLIMS KIDNAPPED MADDIE? WE SHOULD KILL THEM ALL!!"
2) Even after you get past the headline, this is nothing more than a story intended to stir up hate and loathing for the Muslim community. Because it could easily have said "People on line are posting...." or even "Some people on line are posting.....". Because that would be the truth. But the fact they hi-light the people's religion means they are doing it to stir up hate and loathing. The religion of whoever posted this probably has nothing to do with the post itself, and I am pretty sure that if it was a Christian who posted it, then it wouldn't have even got mentioned.
So while there is this ......
"If the Enquirer asked us, we'd credential them. Making sure the Enquirer can write whatever it wants is the only way I can be sure the New York Times is writing whatever it wants"
there is also this......
"We've got people like you here, on cable and on the Internet, and there's no one anywhere on the ideological spectrum that doesn't roll their eyes when their names are spoken out loud. You know, we've always had free press here, we take it for granted... how can you [crumples the paper] treat it like this?! You should give up your space and put another naked woman in there!"
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leoburrows) wrote,
