Burning Issue
By Dave Hitt on Sep 12, 2010 in Religion
It’s time to put the blame for the threatened Quran burning squarely where it belongs: on the media.
The “pastor” at the center of this nonsense has a congregation of about 50 people. No one had paid much attention to him before this, although there is documentation proving he’s a worthless whack job. The appropriate response would have been to ignore him and move on.
But August is a slow news month, and the hungry media picked up this guys torch, as it were, and gave him national, and then international, attention. Even though he backed down, he inspired others to mimic his asshattery. As of today three incidents of Quran burning have been reported, although not with nearly as much fanfare as was given to this schmuck.
The right wing media (Fox) and the left wing media (nearly everyone else) universally condemned him, as they should have, but a much better approach would have been to completely ignore him. He’s the kind of clown who loves to be hated, and the media played right into his hands.
Here’s a suggested guideline for all the “news” organizations to follow the next time something like this happens.  If the attention whore driving the story doesn’t have enough followers to fill a T.G.I. Fridays, ignore him. Treat him as if he didn’t exist. For the lefty media I’d add “treat it the way you treat Muslim honor killings in the US.” No coverage, no mention, no nothin’. Give clowns like this all the attention they deserve – absolutely none.
The birth of the 24 hour news cycle was the death of journalism.
Johnny Virgil | Sep 12, 2010 | Reply
Dave, you are very right.
Trouble is, news organizations are commercial firms. The more trouble, the better.
How can we resolve this? Full state control of media? Somewhere I don’t think you’d approve this.
Better educated people who ignore BS like this? Won’t happen either.
A ban on hate-speech? Germany has this and in some EU countries it is a crime to deny the holocaust. This doesn’t work either.
State-funded news firms, like the BBC, pay less attention to this but not none, because others do it.
I’m at a loss here. Maybe news organisations should not make a profit? Most newspapers don’t anyway.
Eur van Andel | Sep 12, 2010 | Reply
You’re right, JV. When there’s that much air time to fill pure crap, like this, suddenly becomes news.
I don’t have a solution Eur, just felt that no one was pointing out the real source of the problem.
Dave Hitt | Sep 12, 2010 | Reply
I agree this was over played and this should have been ignored but one positive result is that this guys argument was proven when the muslim world ignited in anger and the politicians and military reacted like scared children.
I wonder more about why the media doesn’t spend more time on the guy who was fired by the nj transit for burning a few pages of the damn book.
Tom | Sep 21, 2010 | Reply