Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Pipes and Wartime TV


Daniel Pipes has an article about terrorism and television exposure, asking whether it's a good idea to let terrorists like Osama bin Laden expound their ideas on the airwaves:

The distinguished historian Conor Cruise O'Brien thinks not. When he served as the Irish minister of posts and telecommunications in 1976, he imposed a ban on interviews with Irish Republican Army terrorists and Sinn Fein members, arguing that it was necessary to prevent them from spreading their message. For the same reason, the Russian foreign ministry expressed its "strong indignation" after America's ABC television last week interviewed Chechen terrorist leader Shamil Basayev.

It's such a pity that Daniel Pipes doesn't understand that the Russian federal government is one of the foremost promoters of terrorism in the world today, and that its "war" in Chechnya is designed precisely to sabotage the very principles he aims to safeguard and protect.

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