(9/1/2014)
Related on BackChannels: “A Comment on Anti-Semitic Reportage” – 8/26/2014.
Matti Friedman’s related article on Tablet: “An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth A former AP correspondent explains how and why reporters get Israel so wrong, and why it matters” — 8/26/2014.
With reference to language behavior, the Islamic Small Wars bring to observation the profound divide between the principle of loyalty at any price, starting with lying, and the principle of integrity — truth telling — at some known price, including the loss of access to power. This arrangement works because the tyrant’s power — the power developed by the malignant narcissist — is about control based in the enforcement of fidelity to the narcissist as central to survival and the narcissist’s subsequent enjoyment thereby of limitless narcissistic supply.
Simply put: where despotism is ascendant, it is easier to live with a loyal lie than weather the consequences of telling an uncomfortable truth.
That such a form in power corrupts western institutions, i.e., as with Hamas tacit arrangements with the UNRWA that have the terrorist organizations stockpiling rockets in UNRWA schools; also as with Hamas tactics in war including the direction and inhibition of once independent journalists, appears to come about through some combination of greed (the press wants the story and is willing to settle for a constrained slice of it) and weakness (as perhaps journalists and their organizations wish to come through physically unscathed and politically in position to go out again with the same skewing constraints in place).
Such journalism may be the best practicable under a circumstance managed by Hamas, but it’s also a compromised journalism that has bought into evil, even so, and diminished itself and made its product less trustworthy for that.
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