Media Frenzy At Ground Zero As Publicity Hound Burns Pages Of The Koran

A man seeking to capitalize on the publicity of Florida’s would-be arsonist pastor satisfied the frustrated desires of some in the media today by burning pages of the holy book himself near Ground Zero. While committing acts that will make it easier for extremists to enlist new members is as textbook a definition of “letting the terrorists win” as there can be, are those acts any worse than the media filming what will inevitably become a future Al-Qaeda recruitment video?

As soon as the man arrived with his lighter and his Koran, the media encircled him, shouting him down with questions of his name, nationality, and what exactly it was he was protesting. There were camera flashes and microphones poking through the crowd and hysterical demands for information. You’d think they were trying to talk to Justin Bieber.

Below is the video. We ask you to not focus on the man burning the Koran– it’s a pretty straightforward act and, on its own, should not be respected as newsworthy– but on the way journalists have surrounded the man and how they fawn over his attention:

While no one will reasonably argue that the First Amendment makes such an act illegal, people who behave this way– who think it is morally acceptable to be aggressively disrespectful to others based on their faith– usually do so because they have nothing better to contribute to society. They do not think, create, construct, or even charm– and so their only hope for becoming relevant is to hate. These people are a constant minority in any nation and usually lose their patience and go away when ignored for enough time. So why not ignore them?

It appears some members of the media cannot resist the sinister temptation to give people like this character and the failed-arsonist pastor an incentive to make their vitriol increasingly acidic and their actions increasingly deplorable. That’s not to say there is any direct intent to feed these people’s media addiction or actively disrespect the memory of those who died nine years ago today, but if it happens along the way, they seem to take little issue with it. That these are the individuals entrusted with propagating important information (and thus deciding what is and is not important) makes the trend all the more alarming still.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.