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Is it ethical to make Terry Jones an instant celebrity?
By Lauren | September 7, 2010
I was more than a little appalled to learn that Reverend Terry Jones, pastor of the fifty-member Dove World Outreach Church in Gainesville, Florida, plans publicly to burn copies of the Quran on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the September 11th bombings. Everyone from President Obama to General Petraeus has asked Reverend Jones to refrain, pointing out that the book-burning will create outrage in the Middle East and put the lives of American troops at serious risk. The local fire department has even denied the church a burning permit. However, Reverend Jones apparently is undeterred. The Associated Press quotes him as follows: “We think it’s time to turn the tables, and instead of possibly blaming us for what could happen, we put the blame where it belongs — on the people who would do it. And maybe instead of addressing us, we should address radical Islam and send a very clear warning that they are not to retaliate in any form.’”
And that, folks, is the problem. In my view, the Associated Press shouldn’t be quoting him at all, and neither should any other serious news outlet.
Reverend Jones and his tiny handful of followers have an undeniable First Amendment right to burn books, though I think it’s an especially tasteless way for them to express their feelings about the events of 9/11. It’s a lot less clear to me why Reverend Jones thinks he’s entitled to jeopardize the lives of Americans abroad, but he certainly isn’t the first willfully ignorant loudmouth to let his sense of self-importance get out of hand. The thing that utterly mystifies me is why any serious journalist would think for a minute that his grandiose posturing qualifies as news.
Reverend Jones leads a miniscule congregation whose denomination has roundly denounced his intended actions. He doesn’t even begin to reflect mainstream thinking in America. He and his followers could have announced their intention to burn dozens of books - in fact, they could have burned their church down, if they even have one - and no one in the Middle East would ever have known about it if the national press hadn’t decided to make their antics front-page news. Now, American troops will be at added risk not because a religious crackpot chose to grandstand, but because his grandstanding has been reported all over the world as if it was actually important.
It’s high time the media stopped behaving as if every illiterate jackass with an extreme opinion speaks for the American public as a whole. Americans will mourn the events of 9/11 this coming Saturday, but the vast majority of us will do it in a dignified way without re-enacting scenes from Farenheit 451. Bad taste isn’t news, folks, and neither is this kind of incendiary nonsense (pun fully intended). Cover the real ceremonies of rememberance this Saturday, and please stop giving Reverend Jones more attention than he and his ilk deserve.
Topics: Business Ethics, Professional Ethics, Social Ethics, ethics |
September 7th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Is it ethical to make Terry Jones an instant celebrity? | The ……
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September 7th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
This is another unfortunate example of the way journalism has begun to work: publish sensational stories to garner more eyeballs, regardless of their newsworthiness. Granted, this isn’t a new thing for newspapers; this is just how “yellow journalism” worked at the turn of the century. However, it would be nice to think journalistic integrity has improved in the last hundred years.
September 18th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
It seems as though the quickest way to get noticed by the public these days is to behave badly. Such behavior oftentimes leads to YouTube and television exposure including one’s own TV show. We all bore witness to the White House party crashing antics of Tareq and Michaele Salahi last November. This came on the heels of crashing the Congressional Black Caucuses Foundation Awards dinner at which President Obama spoke. What happened to the Salahi”s? They wound up starring in the new reality TV show on Bravo, The Real Housewives of D.C.