Best way to fight hatred -- allow it to come out from under rocks

The most fascinating thing to come out of the Journalism Conference hosted in East Jerusalem by the National Arab American Journalists Association (see a full report at www.NAAJA-US.com/Con2007.html) is that fighting censorhsip is more important than stopping "hate" speech.

For example, that inciteful (not insightful) radio talk show host Don Imus has returned to the airwaves does not bother me so much. Everyone has a right to express themselves, but the most important freedom is the ability to be able to respond to expressions that are hateful. When Imus croissed the line, the Rev. Al Sharpton galvanized African Americans and pushed him off radio. They embarassed him and forced him to apologize -- something he would never have done had he not feared losing his job. He did lose his job, but now he is back ont he air.

What is wrong about Imus, though, is that the media ignores hate-speech from media people like him. Imus can defame Arabs and Muslims with impunity because 1) Rev. Al Sharpton isn't going to stand up and oreganize a campaign to force him off the airwaves over that kind of hate speech, and 2), more importantly maybe, Arab Americans are not strong enough to protest and force him off the air when he does slander Arabs and Muslims, a special kind of racism involving ethnic discrimination and religious discrimination.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of the most important organizations defending the civil rights of Muslims in America, is slandered all the time. But they have clout and were able to organize a campaign against the hate speech of another radio talk show host who is a good example of the double standard in American media. Michael Savage constantly savages Arabs and Muslims all the time, sometimes creatively and offering criticism that is solid, but just as often irresponsibly and excessively to the point of racism and bigotry.

But Rev. Al Sharpton is not going to organize a campaign against Savage. CAIR did and Savage is now suing them, not for their criticism but because they linked a collage of his most hateful speech into an audio blast available ont heir web site. When you listen to what Savage has said -- he insists it is taken out of context (but then, so did Imus at first) -- it is the most ugly, reprehensible hate speech imaginable.

The target of Savage's hate speech is Arabs and Muslims. And the driving force behid it is the Arab-Israeli conflict and the high tolerance for anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate speech that the conflict has nurtured; in contrast, the Arab-Israeli conflict has done the opposite for Jewish Americans, making almost anything critical of Israel considered, wrongly, "anti-Semitic."

But who wants to stand up and defend Arab rights in the face of criticizing Israel or Israel's supporters. Their demise would be worse than that of Imus's trials and tribulations over the past many months.

The journalism conference addressed these topics head on. Palestinians and Israelis, talking about the issues of hate speech and censorship. Palestinian and Israeli participants alike actually all agreed that censorship of any kind is wrong. Good rises to the top and hate speech eventually is exposed because the majority of audiences are intelligent people who can tell the difference. They don't need some hate speech watchdog to decide who is and who isn't reciting hatred in their speech.

I agree with that. Imus should be allowed to slander and defame Arabs and Muslims. So should Savage. And others like them, too. But the public has a right to decide what is hateful and what is not, and then stand up and protest, and complain and hold the haters' feet to the fires of public outrage.

I think Arab Americans need to do more to stand up to hate speech. As much as I criticize the mainstream American media for standing by idly while anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate speech spews in newspaper columns, radio and TV shows, the fact is it is the responsibility of the victims and targets of hate speech to organize and show the public why the comments are hateful. That's our job.

It's hard, granted, when the state of the Arab American and Muslim media is in constant disarray. The Society of Professional Journalists has given Arab and Muslim Americans an opportunity to express themselves in this blog. Many Arab and Muslim American journalists are not freelancxers like me so they fear that participating will cost their careers. And the ethnic Arab and Muslim media still lives in the dark ages, somewhat, focusing only on politics and failing to address the real challenges including fully and completely and without inhibition or taboos report on their own community truthfully -- stop being advocates.

Khaled Abu-Aker, the editor of the Arabic Media Internet Network (www.AMIN.org), explained during the first panel discussion on the power of Internet Media, that he began in journalism as an activist -- so did I in 1975 -- but he soon realized that the real responsibility of a professional journalist is to report the truth, regardless of how they feel about it. That their goal should not be to mobolize their communities by managing the reporting (as is done often in most Arab and Muslim World media -- and in the mainstream American media, too ... hey, I dod criticize all sides here), but rather to mobolize by accuracy, fairness and truthfulness in journalistic behavior.

Khaled spoke out against censorship -- although when you hear his story of how he was oppressed by the Israeli military occupation censors as a journalist with the East Jerusalem Palestinian newspaper al-Fajr in the 1980s, you will understand.

Journalists from the Jerusalem Post, Chicago Tribune, McClatchy Newspapers, Haaretz, NAAJA, AMIN.org or other publications like Palestine-Israel Journal (www.PIJ.org) and Search for Common Ground, and MidEastYouth.com, came together and left agreeing on many things. But their most important conclusion was that Palestinian and Israeli journalists must come together more often and dedicate themselves to professional journalism, rather than to activism which uses journalism as a front.

I hope the Society of Professional Journalists one day picks up this challenge and helps these two groups of journalists come together, overcome the pressures of the high tension political conflicts, and act as one as professional journalists.

Ray Hanania
www.NAAJA-US.com