Let the man speak
Columbia U let him embarrass himself, why won’t the media?
KYLE LAMOTHE
Are you ready to hear a ground-breaking claim which will shatter your worldview into a tattered mess of pessimism and dejection at the way we receive information? OK then, let me show you to the light: the mass media’s focus on short quotes and sound bites does not allow an entire story to be told.
Have I shocked your brain into mush or did you pick up on the subtle sarcasm? Yes, it is a tired argument, a well-orchestrated sermon to a choir, but the coverage of a recent event made me think about how we obtain information in the media.
On Sept. 24, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, spoke at Columbia University in New York, sparking frenzy in the global media. What made this event significant, however, was not necessarily the Iranian’s words, but rather those of the university’s president, Lee Bollinger.
Perhaps as a reaction to the intense pressure of criticism over the visit from the American public at large, members of the American government and/or the hundreds of protesters outside the speech, Bollinger went on the attack. He called Ahmadinejad out to explain his denial of the Holocaust, human rights abuses, support for terrorist groups, and other horrid actions. In total, Bollinger’s “introduction” took nearly as much time as Ahmadinejad was allowed to speak and caused raucous applause from the audience.
As I listened to the CBC radio news throughout the day, I kept hearing that after this verbal assault, Ahmadinejad replied by calling the remarks “an insult.” Checking the BBC News online article “Iran president in NY campus row,” their coverage echoed the same phrase: “In response, Mr Ahmadinejad called the remarks ‘an insult,’ adding that more research was needed on the Holocaust.”
Judging by this sentence, the average reader is led to believe that Ahmadinejad said that he was personally offended before immediately launching into an attack on the knowledge base surrounding the Holocaust. But, when you look at a transcript of the event, you find that this is really a choice and misleading cut from his address.
Ahmadinejad’s actual response, as stated in the Washington Post’s complete trancsipt, was “I think the text read by the dear gentleman here, more than addressing me, was an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here, present here. In a university environment we must allow people to speak their mind, to allow everyone to talk so that the truth is eventually revealed by all.”
This shows that in actuality the Iranian president was saying that Bollinger’s comments were not an insult to him personally, but an insult to an open forum of free speech which is supposed to allow an audience to come to its own conclusions. Ahmadinejad makes a good point, one that much of the media seemed to miss with their slicing and dicing of his remarks, even if it was probably the only logical one he made during his appearance.
Laying out Ahmadinejad’s opinions in their true context is important because it allows the public to read and hear the president’s words in all of their unfiltered nonsensical glory. One of the most shining beacons of idiocy was his comment on the persecution of homosexuals in Iran: “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals, like in your country.”
Many of the protesters outside the address held signs proclaiming that Hilter lives in the Iranian addressing colleagues inside, arguing that Ahmadinejad should not have been asked to speak at the university. Think, however, if in 1938 or so, Adolf Hitler had visited our country, would it not have been wonderful to hear him speak and justify his actions? He could have strung out a rope of rhetoric and explanations, perfectly suitable for being wrapped back around his neck by a logical and critical public audience.
That is how free speech is designed to work: let everyone speak so that faulty statements can be heard freely and dismissed. Much (but not all, to the National Post’s credit) of the media seemed to misunderstand this by sometimes pulling quotes out of context from Ahmadinejad’s mouth, instead of allowing him to fully embarrass and discredit himself with his words.
Kyle Lamothe has just completed a degree in political studies from the U of M and is a former features editor of the Manitoban.
