Sitting in Capitol Auditorium on Tenley campus I waited with a room full of students to hear Bob Schieffer speak about his career in political journalism. Shuffling in our seats, we began hearing whispers among some of the professors that Bob Shieffer had canceled. It wasn’t until our professor, Iris Krasnow, explained the situation that we heard the big news.
Bob Shieffer was called away to cover the breaking news story that the U.S. Ambassador to Libya had been killed earlier that morning on September 11 – only 11 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Throughout the Middle East, Asia and Europe protests began over a film depicting the prophet Muhummad as a womanizing, child-molesting, violent idiot. The film was said to be responsible for the riots in Libya.
While the film is obviously low-budget, it didn’t remain lost in the shadows of Youtube where it belongs. Americans, including myself, cannot simply understand why something so miniscule as a D-movie could possibly be changing the U.S.’s history with Muslims forever.
The United States is in the biggest PR crisis in history.
To the Muslim religion, depicting Muhummad in any way goes against the Koran. Depicting him running around molesting children and murdering everything in sight? It’s unthinkable.
Yet instead of downplaying the video in hopes of quelling any major protests that may spring from its offensive content, the media for the most part immediately pointed its finger at the video for the attacks, before being confirmed by the government. Some news agencies name the director, Sam Becile, and describe a few scenes from it. Others say the title of the movie; some of the more scandalous ones have shown images from the movie, even linking to it so readers can watch it for themselves.
Now, I’m all about free speech and the First Amendment and all those wonderful things that being a journalism major I have come to appreciate and understand. I don’t believe that things should be censored simply because they’re offensive. Honestly everything offends someone (even those cat-playing-piano videos on Youtube must have PETA in an uproar).
But, when something as small and trivial as a Youtube movie trailer for a bad movie that no one in their right mind would see causes an international Muslim revolution, I think there should be some precautions, especially on the part of the media.
The video shouldn’t be named, the scenes shouldn’t be described in great detail, and there shouldn’t be a link to the video giving it free publicity. This video, as heinous as it may be, has been linked to the U.S., and its the media’s job to begin cutting ties in the Middle East’s eyes between Americans and extremist view and hatred of Muslims.
Our bad image in the Middle East is a byproduct of 9/11 and something that the United States hasn’t shaken off yet. It should be the number one concern of us living in a post 9/11 society. But if anything should show us the gravity our depleting image in the Middle East, these riots over this stupid film should.
Without quick thinking from those above, America’s image will continue to be one that brings anger and misunderstanding throughout the Middle East. In a sense, the U.S. needs to find the best PR crisis management team in history and begin to clean up its reputation before it’s too late.
Kendal (Gapinski) Kloiber 