In Post Sept. 11 America, the “un- free” news media is even more un- free

Ray Hanania’s Column

Opinion in the “New” America is taking on a new and morally unethical role that is sinister in its lack of professionalism.

It used to be that individuals who holding views challenging the tyranny of the majority, were simply ignored in a conspiracy of demagoguery involving the American government and the majority of the so-called American “free press.”

Now, those that challenge this hypocrisy face accusations of “treachery” and of being “unpatriotic.” What little opportunity they had to express themselves is eroding.

In America, the news media has never been “free.” It is “un-free.” The American media is dominated by individuals of hypocrisy who have two contradictory messages, one that ennobles free speech when it suits their beliefs and one that denies it brutally to those who challenge them.

The unfree American media hypocrites continue to stoke the emotions of the American people and dance around a bonfire of hysteria, bigotry, and distortions. This exclusively American system of media hypocrisy continues to mutate into an uglier atmosphere of restrictions making a mockery of democracy that exposes the American news media’s double standards to those who wish to open their eyes.

Everyday in the sanctimonious American news media, columns upon columns express the view supporting the state terrorism of the Israeli Government of Ariel Sharon, a man held responsible for some of the worst acts of butchery and carnage in the Middle East. The redundancy factor in the American media’s hypocrisy is so obscene it resembles a killer that continues to stab a corpse repeatedly long after life has been taken.

This same news media denies to those who disagree the right to challenge these one-sided, often inaccurate views, refusing to allow them to express themselves. This is not the result of so-called “Jewish control” of the news media, a concept created by Arab World leaders who simply lacked the intellect to understand the real problem.

It is the result of the purest form of evil politics, a politics that is so weak in moral legitimacy that it must deny anyone the right to challenge its foundations because its foundations are weak and indefensible. In the American news media, the most effective way to defend the indefensible is to take away the right of those to challenge it.

It becomes a news media manipulation by individuals whose oppressive viewpoints come together in a conspiracy of tyranny, irrespective of race, religion or national origin.

This dangerous environment has worsened in the wake of an event that is contemptuously hailed as the most tragic in American history. (As the death count from September 11 continues to drop, it may turn out that the recent terrorist attack is in fact only second to the enormity of the tragedy of Pearl Harbor.)

In this American environment of media control, where Americans are spoon fed hysterical and inaccurate lies, is it any wonder that 62 percent of Americans in a recent Newsweek poll believe that Yasir Arafat is an obstacle to peace?

The news media has been pounding that false message into American minds for weeks, covering the criminal state terrorism of the Government of Israel as an accessory to a felony.

While Sharon and his criminal government continue to point to these carefully manipulated polling results manufactured in an atmosphere of public bias, the truth is that the results bode well for Arafat.

The pro-Arab viewpoint, which is more accurate and truthful abut events surrounding terrorism in the Middle East, is being suppressed in the un-free American news media. Tokenism exists, but the un-freedom of the American news media is dominated by those who hate.

In this atmosphere of anti-Arab hatred and pro-Israeli hysteria, and in the absence and suppression by the un-free American news media of a contradictory viewpoint, it is remarkable only that the numbers are not higher than they are.

The poll results, in fact, show that if the American people were really free to hear both sides of the story, American public opinion would be in support of the Palestinian people and in the denunciation of Israel’s criminal state terrorism policies.

But Americans are not free. They are captive to the demagoguery of an un-free news media that self-celebrates in a cesspool of un-professionalism and hypocrisy.

Why else are many American political leaders, who on one hand extol the so-called virtues of their “Constitutional rights to free speech,” deny the right of free speech to those they disagree with?

Why else to Americans and the complicit American news media challenge the right of Al-Jazeera and other Arab World news media outlets to report the other side of the story? What are they afraid of, except that their own views are so weak that they cannot possibly stand up to the truth?

The viewpoint of this tyranny of the American majority is fragile in its construction. It is indefensible, except in its ability to deny anyone else the right to speak out against it and challenge its obvious flaws.

(Ray Hanania is a Palestinian American writer based in Chicago and a regular contributor to MMN. His columns are archived on the web at www.hanania.com)

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