Jane Novak, writing on the MSM
While the NYT finally gets around to noticing that Allah and Democracy Can Get Along Fine (link from Hispalibertas), Jane Novak’s asking, Will the US Media Please Stand Up?

In a nearly unanimous fashion, US media hot shots have failed to note that their colleagues in Iraq are indeed deliberately targeted, kidnapped, and murdered-by the “insurgents.”

Abdel Hussein Khazaal, a correspondent for the US backed Al-Hurra television station, was shot dead in Basra on February 9th. His three-year-old son, who was with him, was also killed in cold blood. Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) has noted that “Khazaal was targeted because he worked for a US television station.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) confirms that “insurgent groups have frequently targeted journalists and media workers (in Iraq) in reprisal for their work…” Around the world, daily, journalists are targeted for their profession of exposing hidden truths.

In 2004, seventy-one journalists were murdered, in 2003 fifty-three, in 2002 forty-six. Only when the allegation is that the US is doing the targeting does the US media lift its sleeping head.

According to the World Association of Newspaper Editors (WAN) 130 journalists are currently in prison around the world. At least somebody is counting them, but these journalists and editors have no vocal advocates among the powerful and free American talking heads.

Some organizations, like WAN, provide important training, prizes, publications, legal advice, and scholarships for developing media. International organizations like CPJ and RSF regularly send protest letters. But the big boys with their big bats and big voices are missing from the fight.

New York Times weekly columnists Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert, and Paul Krugman have a world audience but no time for anything but Bush bashing. Do they understand that speaking the names of these 130 may keep the prisoners alive, get them released, diminish their literal torture, or increase their food rations?

Their atrocities can only continue in the darkness of obscurity. American media titans have the power to shine the light into the prison cells, but they don’t.

Is it impolitic, not PC, to advocate for victims of repression? That used to be a liberal thing. Are they expecting the journalists in the censored media to break the story

Don’t miss Armies of Liberation, Jane’s blog.