Muzzling Mahmoud?
We all saw the stories and the attendant breathless news coverage: Mahmoud wants to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center site! Mahmoud's going to Columbia University to talk! Mahmoud's talking to the UN! And, yes, Mahmoud's talking with "60 Minutes!" My take on last week's "Morning Joe" was that Ahmadinejad was playing the media like a fiddle, saying a few outlandish things here and there to spur discussion and draw attention.
Friedman's suggestion, though? Ignore him.
What if ...As much as I'd like to think that ignoring Ahmadinejad would expedite his removal from the international scene – I'm the guy who endorses restrictions on terrorists' access to the airwaves, remember – I just can't see how the media turning its collective back on this man serves a higher purpose. Like it or not, this is a man -- sure, a 'petty and cruel' man -- in pursuit of nuclear weapons, a man who has denied the holocaust and who has said he wants to wipe Israel "off the map." (Along with the removal of the United States, "God willing.")What if the media had largely ignored him? Can a wannabe newsmaker make news if there is no media coverage?
What if reporters didn't try so hard to make such a big story out of his visit?
I know this would have been unrealistic, if not impossible. Just the same, I would've loved to see it. If that had happened, the U.S. media could've shown Iran's president just who's the boss over here.
If anything, I think the media coverage serves as a twist on Ben Franklin's maxim "It's better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." Or, as the Washington Posts Dana Milbank pointed out yesterday:
Much of officialdom spent yesterday condemning Columbia University for hosting the Iranian leader while he visits the United Nations this week. There were similar protests outside the National Press Building in Washington, where reporters gathered to question Ahmadinejad in a videoconference. "Don't give him any press!" shouted one woman.What the media did to the Iranian President this week was not give Ahmadinejad a megaphone. Rather, it put him under the microscope – his holocaust denials, his faux peace stance, his inability to answer direct questions – and gave us a better idea of what we and the rest of the world are dealing with. He's an international leader, after all – though, to be fair, the ayatollahs hold the real power in Iran – and the more we know about him, the better.But that objection misses a crucial point: Without listening to Ahmadinejad, how can the world appreciate how truly nutty he is?