Although journalists are prone to argue passionately for freedom of speech and against censorship, common sense usually referees those discussions.
Without guidance from common sense, our morals-and-ethics compass goes haywire. We can overshoot reasonable limits and become dangerous.
Such was the case Tuesday when the Fox News Channel broadcast the latest audiotape of someone claiming to be Osama bin Laden.
Fox broadcast the 16-minute tape live as the Al Jazeera network was broadcasting it to the Arab world. Of course, Fox also ran an English-language translation as the tape played.
The network seemed to have forgotten that in October 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice had asked TV executives to be careful with bin Laden videotapes because they could contain subtle signals for his operatives. Presumably, the same could be said of audiotapes.
Yes, Secretary of State Colin Powell had stirred interest in the tape earlier in the day with comments about its content. But details were missing, leaving Fox viewers — and perhaps bin Laden operatives — braced for no telling what when the tape began.
And, granted, neither Rice, Powell nor White House spokesman Ari Fleischer (all of whom were familiar with the tape) had stepped forward with a request for caution in playing the tape. Were they giving the media a wink and a nod to encourage its playing?
Whatever the case, no other TV network followed Fox’s lead. Common sense and sound professional practice persuaded them to review and edit the tape prior to broadcasting parts of it.
As far as I know, no newspaper in the United States published the tape’s contents in full.
Far from censorship, such editing normally would aim to cut through the flab to the muscle, assuming there is any. Who has space or time to waste on empty rhetoric? Editing also would serve somewhat as a guard against the possibility of spreading messages to al Qaeda operatives.
The process would produce a fair and accurate summary, but it would eliminate the extraneous rhetoric and propaganda that typically fill political communications.
I don’t know of any professional news-gathering organization of any stature that would take a major announcement from a political group, much less terrorists, and print or air it verbatim without some sort of scrutiny beforehand.
The idea, then, of broadcasting raw streaming audio from al Qaeda boggles my mind. It boggles my mind so much that I have to believe that Fox’s decision was based on some sort of federal green light and opportunistic competitiveness, not courageous journalism.
Professionals do run the Fox News Channel. One would presume that they’re as careful about being duped as any of the rest of us. That’s why their airing of the al Qaeda tape just doesn’t make sense.
Fox argued that it was broadcasting a tape that already was airing simultaneously throughout the Arab world. In other words, it seems, the news was out and couldn’t be stopped, so why deny anyone real-time access to what was being said?
On the face of it, the situation was asking for big trouble.
But suppose I’m wrong. Suppose the tape did not contain secret messages to clandestine operatives.
Suppose no one in that vast Al Jazeera-Fox audience sympathized with an extremist windbag jawing on and on and on — again — about righteousness and killing infidels (who happen to be our loved ones, neighbors and colleagues). As far as could be determined, that was essentially the message.
Suppose no one was inspired to take up arms against the United States. Suppose viewers were left grumbling that terrorists need to get lives, not take them.
Even if the tape had flopped, propaganda was given free rein to work its melodramatic magic and stink up our world with unchallenged ignorance.
Yes, analysis and discussion followed, but who knows how much damage may have been done by then? Why run that risk?
No one could say for sure that the source of the information was bin Laden. Why give such credence to a questionable source?
And speaking of credence, when Fox linked its substantial resources with Al Jazeera’s, a 16-minute blast of al Qaeda propaganda inherited a bit of Fox’s credibility.
A complete load of garbage information reached an immensely larger audience. I can’t help but wonder whether Fox would give Timothy McVeigh a microphone and 16 minutes to preach his message to the world.
I’d hope not. We don’t need to be surrendering the air waves, or the printed page, to killers.
