Now for an Arabic point of view!
Wake-Up America!
Raid Qusti, rqusti@arabnews.com
American writers have always held that the Arab World is full of dictatorship. They accuse the Arabs of living in a huge prison where newspapers and magazines publish nothing but propaganda and are always pro-government. They boast about how free the American press is, and how it answers to no one, being a power in its own right in America. And then comes the latest American scandal: The White House pressures Newsweek to retract an article it published about mishandling the Holy Qur’an.
The US later officially confirmed the report and stated that five cases involving the Holy Qur’an being mishandled had occurred at Guantanamo Bay. We all know that thousands of people in Afghanistan protested though whether they read the report in the magazine is not the issue here.
The issue is political influence and pressure exerted to retract a news story after its publication, something that should be a wake-up call, not only for the entire American media but for the American people. The question Americans should ask now is: How free is our press? How free can it be when the White House can ask for reports it is unhappy with to be retracted?
For hundreds of years, the American people have been proud of their press. And many have considered the press as what I refer to as “the people’s power” or “the will of the people.” In the ’50s and ’60s, whenever injustice happened in America, ordinary people would threaten those who violated and took away their rights by either giving them what they rightfully deserved, or going to the papers.
The Watergate scandal in the early ’70s was another case of the freedom of press in America and the people’s power. It dealt with the misuse of power in the White House and ended in President Richard Nixon’s resignation from office.
And again, it was the will of the people and the freedom of the press that pressured decision-makers in the White House and in Washington to call off the Vietnam War and bring American troops home.
The White House’s pressure on Newsweek, in my opinion, is a clear violation of one of the main bases on which America was founded: Freedom of speech.
Had I been the editor or the publisher of Newsweek and been sure of my sources that revealed a shocking violation of human rights in Guantanamo Bay, I would have taken the White House spokesman or anyone speaking on behalf of the president to the Supreme Court for putting pressure on me to retract it.
Sadly, Newsweek succumbed to the pressure and followed the footsteps of other globally reputable media organizations such as the BBC when it was pressured several years ago by certain extreme Jewish groups to change the word “assassinations” to “targeted killings” in its reports about murdering Palestinian officials in the occupied Palestinian territories.
I am an avid reader of Newsweek, and I very much enjoy its reports and its analysis of events and happenings in the world.
For years, the magazine has been favorite, mostly for its balanced reporting and in-depth journalism.
Sadly, since the retraction, I often think twice before buying it — but I believe I am not the only disappointed reader out there.
I believe the editor of Newsweek should give us all an apology, mostly to his fellow-Americans, and those who still believe the American press has some remaining freedom of speech, without being subjected to pressure from higher authorities.
The other sadness I have felt about the media in America is that even before the Newsweek report was published, Americans knew that clear human rights violations by their own citizens against detainees are taking place on a daily basis at Guantanamo Bay. Yet despite their knowledge, there is a general lethargy and inaction by the American people.
I keep asking myself if these reports had been published decades ago, would the will of the people in America have made a difference? Alcatraz, the notorious prison near San Francisco, was shut down in the late 1960s after the inhuman treatment of prisoners there was made public.
Today, Guantanamo Bay is another Alcatraz, except that detainees are subjected to far worse conditions and treated with less respect — if respect is even there at all. Many of the detainees cannot defend themselves and many may be innocent.
So long to the innocent until proven guilty remark.
Between pressure from the White House to retract the Newsweek story, the incidents in Guantanamo Bay, the actions of American soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, I say, we are entering on a new era of American dictatorship.
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