On the Manipulation of Western Media Under the Guise of Freedom

Why do we confer undue legitimacy on the likes of Hamas spokespeople and Hezbollah media manipulators? Freedom of the press does not imply that we grant carte blanche to sworn enemies of the very freedoms western civilization cherishes.
The western press has always employed editorial discretion in determining what is worthy of publication. Denying crass manipulators of truth and reality a mass public forum is not the same as censorship. It is merely the sane exercise of an intelligent selection process. As Hier & Cooper note below, would we also entertain giving op-ed space today to the likes of Dr. Mengele?

In a similar vein, Marvin Kalb looks at how we in the West were crassly manipulated by the expert propagandists of Hezbollah in last summer's Lebanon War. Where was the MSM when it should have been challenging the 'fixers' of Hezbollah, who determined when and where and what could be covered? Why was it not deemed peculiar that no Hezbollah 'soldiers' were filmed during the war? As Kalb points out, it was as if Israel was fighting ghosts. Hezbollah expertly manipulated the coverage so that most of what the West got to see was women and children fleeing from the smoldering rubble of Israeli 'aggression.'
david brumer

A Byline for Hamas?
Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper

First, the New York Times and the Washington Post simultaneously ran Op-Ed articles by Ahmed Yousef, a senior leader of Hamas who defended his group's bloody putsch in Gaza. Now, the Los Angeles Times has opened its Op-Ed page to Hamas political bureau deputy Mousa Abu Marzook. Whatever happened to the basic standards that civilized people are expected to live by? Why is the Times conferring a journalistic honoris causa degree on terrorists whose modus operandi is to deliberately target innocent civilians of all faiths on buses, in theaters and in shopping malls? Hamas' views deserve real-time coverage, just the way the statements and actions of Hitler and Stalin received coverage. But such people do not deserve the status of a sagely byline, because that destroys the distinction between honorable men and women bound by basic principles of humanity and the despots and terrorists eager to destroy those values. If the criteria is simply because "it is an important story," then would the editors have welcomed articles by Auschwitz's Dr. Josef Mengele justifying his gruesome medical experiments, or by the Virginia Tech killer explaining why he committed mass murder? When will Osama bin Laden's guest column appear? Newspapers don't have the right to bestow editorial credibility on those bent on genocide. (Los Angeles Times)

(video) Marvin Kalb: Hezbollah intimidated & manipulated western media
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83mxTzMeEbo

Prof. Marvin Kalb is saying that Hezbollah intimidated and manipulated the western media and that Israel deals with news while Hezbollah deals with news that is propaganda. Look at minute 4:01 in which he tells how Hezbollah misled the western media by making up an event that never occurred in reality and also at the start where he talks about how Hezbollah threatened to confiscate cameras of journalists.

http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP07-012
The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict

By Marvin Kalb
Working Paper Number:RWP07-012Submitted: 02/28/2007
Abstract:
Based on content analysis of global media and interviews with many diplomats and journalists, this paper describes the trajectory of the media from objective observer to fiery advocate, becoming in fact a weapon of modern warfare. The paper also shows how an open society, Israel, is victimized by its own openness and how a closed sect, Hezbollah, can retain almost total control of the daily message of journalism and propaganda.