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What I’ll be asking Christiane

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Feb 17, 2009

Christiane Amanpour (Courtesy: CNN)

This Wednesday night, CNN’s chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, will join me on a New York stage to discuss moral courage in journalism.

Democracy demands investigative journalism. Speaking truth to power for the sake of democratizing information — uncovering it, putting it in more hands, spreading knowledge (which is power), and risking backlash for doing so — this is morally courageous journalism.

Where do we have that today? How do we get more of it? What, if anything, can citizens do to ensure moral courage in our multi-media age?

For answers, Christiane’s the go-to gal. She’s dared to outrage Bill Clinton in front or her bosses. Yasser Arafat once slammed the phone on her during a live broadcast. And Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accuses her of rudeness. All of them got questions they didn’t want to hear.

In that spirit, I know Christiane and I don’t see eye to eye about Islam. She certainly acknowledges the life-and-death threats posed by fundamentalist Muslims — watch her analysis of last week’s troubling concession to the Taliban by the Pakistani government.

But the fact is that I view mainstream Islamic practices today as more corrupted, and thus more dangerous to human dignity, than she does. This difference might lead to a disagreement about one of the moral courage challenges facing media around the globe: Can stories about Islam be covered properly, knowing that journalists will be accused of bigotry for conveying information or opinions that some Muslims don’t want to hear — and knowing that they could engage in violence to silence the journalists?

Consider what happened just last week to the editor and publisher of The Statesman, one of India’s most prestigious English-language publications. India, keep in mind, is the world’s biggest democracy. And a supposedly secular one, to boot.

The Statesman re-printed a column from the British newspaper, The Independent, about why religious notions that oppress don’t deserve uncritical reverence. Wrote the columnist, “All people deserves respect, but not all ideas do. I don’t respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don’t respect the idea that we should follow a “Prophet” who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year-old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn’t follow him. I don’t respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don’t respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. When you demand ‘respect,’ you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade.”

Apparently, four thousand Indian Muslims didn’t reciprocate that respect for the very human columnist, or his human editor, or his human publisher. Instead, they rioted. I don’t mean to say “protested,” which is a democratic right. I mean they rushed the offices of The Statesman and called for the arrest of all involved.

Two days later, Calcutta cops charged the editor and publisher for “deliberating acting with malicious intent to outrage religious feelings.” They delinquents are now out — on bail.

If this were a freak story, I’d understand why it shouldn’t be invoked to ask about moral courage in journalism. But the reality is, stories like this are becoming legion. Read my previous post, which focuses on the perils of Hindu extremism. Even the United Nations human rights council is caving to religious censors who warn them not to raise themes such as arranged marriage, stoning, or hanging, lest they “blaspheme” religion. To hell with human rights, no? It’s a travesty I’ve tackled well before last week.

So one of my questions for Christiane Amanpour has to be: How should journalists (and, more to the point, their employers) stand up to the accusation that they’re “disrespecting” when, in fact, they’re doing their jobs?

I have no idea how she’ll respond, but I do know what apologists for dogma would say: There’s a distinction between informing and offending. When that distinction is violated, stand back. You’ll have hell to pay, and you’ll have provoked it.

Which brings me to the all-important question:

If religious dogmatists can hold views that offend me rather than inform me, but I don’t riot over the offense I sincerely and profoundly feel, why should media coddle those who take the violent way out? Isn’t that playing politics rather than doing journalism?

On Wednesday night, we’ll investigate.

The Moral Courage Conversations are supported by the Ford Foundation, the European Foundation for Democracy and the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University.