Thomas Friedman, in Can We Talk? regrets the firing of Octavia Nasr.
I find Nasr’s firing troubling. Yes, she made a mistake. Reporters covering a beat should not be issuing condolences for any of the actors they cover. It undermines their credibility. But we also gain a great deal by having an Arabic-speaking, Lebanese-Christian female journalist covering the Middle East for CNN, and if her only sin in 20 years is a 140-character message about a complex figure like Fadlallah, she deserved some slack. She should have been suspended for a month, but not fired. It’s wrong on several counts.
To begin with, what has gotten into us? One misplaced verb now and within hours you can have a digital lynch mob chasing after you — and your bosses scrambling for cover. A journalist should lose his or her job for misreporting, for misquoting, for fabricating, for plagiarizing, for systemic bias — but not for a message like this one.
I’d argue that that Nasr’s tweet was indicative of a “systemic bias.” Still, as Lee Smith wrote:
The Western press delights in rattling the bourgeois sensibilities of its audience by showing the multifaceted aspects of Hezbollah–it’s not just a militia with an appetite for slaughtering Jews, it’s also a social welfare outfit that provides educational opportunities!–and even collaborates with the Party of God by publishing doctored photographs of Israeli “war crimes.” The op-ed pages of America’s dailies are replete with articles promoting Hezbollah’s “pragmatism” and “moderation” (which also happens to be the position of the president’s counter-terrorism czar John Brennan, and a recent CENTCOM analytical exercise), while reported pieces from Lebanon pass along Party of God press releases as objective analysis. If every U.S. journalist who quoted Hezbollah mouthpiece Amal Saad Ghorayeb as a respected “scholar” was fired, the bars of East Beirut would lose 25 percent of their business.
Rather than being unique, Nasr’s sympathy for Fadlallah was par for the course among Western journalists. (This is why I thought that Nasr was fired for some other reason. The tweet was a convenient excuse.)
At the end of his column, Friedman writes:
Of course, Fadlallah was not just a social worker. He had some dark side. People at CNN tell me Nasr knew both. But here’s what I know: The Middle East has to change in order to thrive, and that change has to come from within, from change agents who are seen as legitimate and rooted in their own cultures. They may not be America’s cup of tea. But we need to know about them, and understand where our interests converge — not just demonize them all.
That’s why I prefer to get my news from a CNN reporter who can actually explain why thousands of men and women are mourning an aged Shiite cleric — whom we consider nothing more than a terrorist — than a reporter who doesn’t know at all, or worse, doesn’t dare to say.
Michael Young, though, observes:
What the tributes to Fadlallah show us, against the backdrop of the relative silence surrounding Abu Zeid’s death throughout the Middle East, is that things are out of kilter when it comes to liberalism in the region. An essentially conservative cleric has been played up as the vanguard of progressiveness and dialogue, while a scholar who sought to introduce a freethinking outlook toward religion, who had to go into exile to escape possible assassination, departed from this world with little comment – certainly not from the British ambassador to Egypt, Dominic Asquith, who also hosts a personal embassy blog.
In other words, while Fadlallah’s views on certain social issues were different, his views on terror and Israel were pretty mainstream and unlike Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid (whom Young profiles) didn’t really challenge Islam. It’s almost as if the hatred of Israel and (at least philosophical) support for terror is what makes an Islamic cleric genuine in Friedman’s eyes.
Perhaps Fadlallah had been somewhat alienated from Hezbollah and Iran, but that didn’t stop a news agency of the latter from carrying praises from the former in his memory.
The revered cleric served as the resistance’s spiritual leader following its formation in 1982.
In a statement, Hezbollah said the passing was a loss weighing heavy upon both “Lebanon and the whole world,” Rizk, reported Press TV’s correspondent in the Lebanese capital.
“This is a big loss. He was symbol whom our arena is in dire need of,” the statement added.
Referring to Fadlallah’s impassioned criticism of Israel and the United States, the statement said, “He stood with courage in support of the resistance against the Zionist enemy. He also expressed his outright rejection of the conspiracies of the hegemonic powers.”
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
“A journalist should lose his or her job for misreporting, for misquoting, for fabricating, for plagiarizing, for systemic bias — but not for a message like this one.”
How about for systemic idiocy?
“Plagiarizing.” Does that include passing along Hezbollah press releases as if they were the reporter’s own writing?