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Today's
Stories
April 15, 2005
Michael
Neumann
A Happy Compromise: Hate Crimes Reporting
in the Toronto Globe and Mail
April
14, 2004
Tom
Reeves
Return to Haiti: an American Learning
Zone
Reza
Fiyouzat
Japan and Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
What Bush Really Said
Diane
Christian
The Real Passion Story: We Rule; You
Die
April
13, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
The Ill, Old and Young of Fallujah Ask:
"Do We Look Like Fighters?"
Stan
Goff
The Bridge: a Rant
Dave
Lindorff
The Real Lessons of Vietnam
April 10
/ 12, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Greatest Radical Journalist of His Age
Patrick
Cockburn
Ambush, Kidnap, Murder: Another Day in "Post War" Iraq
Ellen Cantarow
Health Under Siege on the West Bank
Tariq Ali
Iraqi
Resistance: a New Phase
Werther
Pseudoconservatism Revisited: When God is Pro War & Other Delicacies
Robert
Fisk
Bush's War Lords to Their Critics: "Just Shut Up"
Gary Leupp
Indian Wars, Vietnam and Orientalist Fantasy
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Cont.
Jorge Mariscal
Perils of the Bootstrap
Phil Gasper
Defying Stereotypes About Death Row
Dave Zirin
Bringing the Black Freedom Struggle Into Sports: an Interview with Lee
Evans
Brandy
Baker
The Revolution is Playing at a Theater Near You
Mickey Z.
Underground Music is Free Media: an Interview with Twiin
Ali Tonak
Get Ready for the Million Worker March
Harry Browne
Asking the Wrong Question About Richard Clarke & 9/11
Gideon
Samet
The Sharonizing of America
Conn Hallinan
Remote Control Warriors
Website
of the Weekend
Taboo
Tunes
April 9,
2004
Robert
Fisk
This
War's Simple Truth: Iraqis Do Not Want Us
John L.
Hess
The
Non--Confessions of a Warrior Princess: Condi on the Stand
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Condoleezza's Condescensions
Christopher Brauchli
Holes in the Sky: Bush's Crazed Missile Defense Plan
Don Santina
Forget the Alamo!: Glorifying the Fight for Slavery in Texas
William S. Lind
The 4G Warfare Seminar, Cont.
Bill Christison
9/11
Commission is Bush's New Lapdog
Website of the Day
What We've Done to Fallujah
April 8, 2004
Wayne Madsen
Rice
(and the Record) Proves It: Bush Knew, But Failed to Act
Kurt Nimmo
Will
Bush Flatten Fallajuh?
Patrick
Cockburn
Guided
Missile; Misguided War
Laura Flanders
Steamed
Rice
Larry Everest
What Condi Rice is Hiding
Adam Federman
Sacred Capitalism Hits Russia
M. Junaid
Alam
The Iraqi Intifada Begins
Norman Solomon
The Quest for a Monopoly on Violence
Douglas
Valentine
Echoes
of Vietnam: Phoenix, Assassination and Blowback in Iraq
Website of the Day
Xispas: Chicano Art, Culture and Politics
April 7,
2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Those
Pulitzers!
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Deeper
into the Mouth of Hell: We Must Find the Exit from Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Tet
in Iraq: Closer to the Cosmic Disaster?
Patrick
Cockburn
Battles
Across Iraq: US Death Toll Mounts
Kathy Kelly
Pacification: Worth the Price?
Sonali
Kolhatkar
What Are You Doing About Afghanistan?
Rahul Mahajan
Report from Baghdad: Opening the Gates of Hell
Robert
Fisk
US Airlifts Saddam to Qatar
Mike Whitney
America Out of Iraq, Now!
Sam Hamod
Bush, Pandora's Box and the Tiger
April 6, 2004
C.G. Estabrook
Mercenaries
and Occupiers
William
Blum
The
Anti--Empire Report: the Israel Lobby
Col. Dan
Smith
The
Language of Disbelief: 1.3 Billion Still Live in War Zones
Dr. Bulent Gokay
The Coming Islamic Republic of Iraq?
Lynn Landes
Faking Democracy: Americans Don't Vote; Machines Do
Sheila Samples
What Would Royko Write?
Jason Leopold
Condi's Blind Spot: Rice Never Mentioned al--Qaeda
Mickey Z.
A Reality Show with No End in Sight
Robert
Fisk
Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy
|
April
14, 2004
A Happy Compromise
Hate
Crime Reporting in the Toronto Globe & Mail
By MICHAEL NEUMANN
The
Globe and Mail is a respectable paper. It's probably the most respectable
paper in Canada. What's more, it's not owned by hard--line Zionists;
Toronto has Izzy Asper's National Post to fill that slot. The editor
is Jewish, but so what? so am I. Nothing suggests that the Globe and
Mail ought to be biased in favor of Jews or against Muslims, blacks,
and native people.
The
Globe and Mail abhors racism. The Globe and Mail has often condemned
racism. But the Globe and Mail is racist in one precisely definable
sense: it assigns more value to Jews than to other ethnic groups.
The
mental processes which generate this assignment are unknown to me. One
thing is clear: the Globe and Mail folks have a problem. They quite
sincerely abhor racism yet exhibit a form of it, a classic example of
what is known as cognitive dissonance: they have conflicting attitudes
which, unmanipulated, would produce considerable discomfort. Fortunately
for the Globe and Mail, there has emerged a happy compromise.
Its
reporters, columnists, and in some cases its sources say all the right
things, and cover hate crimes against all ethnic groups. Globe articles
consistently refer to non--Jewish victims of discrimination with the
utmost sympathy and respect -- well, as we'll see, usually. The reports
convey, more or less, the message that all hate crimes are abhorrent,
all are equally important. But -- and here is the compromise -- newspapers
express and convey their values more in the extent of their coverage
than in its contents.
The
New York Times could proclaim, when it ran the occasional page 10, 125--word
item on irritable bowel syndrome, that irritable bowel syndrome was
the most urgent problem confronting the human race. But if cancer grabbed
all the front--page coverage, we would understand that the Times did
not really regard irritable bowel syndrome as a big deal. The fine words
would be a lie or an exercise in self--deception. Cancer would have
been assigned far more importance. And in its coverage -- usually despite
its fine words -- the Globe and Mail conveys just that message about
hate crimes against Jews and other ethnic groups: the former are important,
the latter are not.
Recently
this has become obvious. On March 16th, when Jewish homes were spray--painted
with slogans. You had to notice because The Globe and Mail put the story
on about a third of page one, with a photo taking up over half the space
above the fold. The story continued on page 8, where it was tastefully
paired with two articles on possible antisemitism at a Toronto golf
club. These occupied the entire print area of page 9. The letters column
on page 12 led off with two submissions suggesting people needed to
pay more attention to antisemitism.
On
March 25th, a Islamic centre in the Toronto area was spray--painted
with slogans and set on fire. Tables were destroyed and chairs thrown
outside. The story (March 26th) made the bottom of page 12. (The top
contained a much longer story, with photograph, about a hairdresser
who'd won an African--Canadian Achievement Award.) It got little more
space than the page 8 continuation of the March 17th anti--semitism
story, and ended -- as if to validate the seriousness of the incident
-- with a statement of solidarity from the Canadian Jewish Congress.
A
letter to the Globe and Mail about its coverage got no response. Then,
a few days later, all hell broke loose.
I
am not referring to the start of the Shia revolt in Iraq, which made
the front page of the Globe on April 6th. That story was utterly dwarfed
by another: at 2:30am, the United Talmud Torah elementary school in
Montreal had been firebombed, and its library heavily damaged. A note
had been left linking the attacks to the Israel/Palestine conflict.
The
two stories and accompanying photograph about this event occupied the
entire front page above the fold, and about a quarter of the page below
the fold. The headline is a large banner across the whole top, something
the Globe and Mail doesn't do very often. It has the Prime Minister
proclaiming: 'This is not our Canada'. (If he proclaimed anything about
the Pickering arson, we never heard about it.) The stories continue
on page 8, occupying the entire print area, about 7/8 of the page above
the fold.
Nothing
more happened the next day, but there is another page 1 story on the
fire, about how much damage there was and how upset it made the librarian.
Page 3 provides an appropriately complementary article on how "A
Holocaust victim's Bible details the horrors of Mauthausen concentration
camp." The page 1 story continues on page 6; again the continuation
is noticeably longer than the Pickering arson piece. There is also an
editorial on page 18.
The
next day, on page 19, there is a column on the incident by Margaret
Wente -- "Race hatred -- a sign of social illness." She generously
allows that, "For most people across Canada, the front--page pictures
of the firebombed Jewish library in Montreal were a hard kick in the
stomach." More on her anti--racism later. On Saturday, April 10th,
page 2 has a "Letter from the Editor", again with photo: "Book
donations rise from the ashes". It talks about how librarians and
schoolchildren across Canada are pitching in to restore the library's
collection, and also mentions that the editor spent nine years attending
the school. Apparently it did not occur to him that this might skew
his perception of the event's importance. Of course I don't know whether
further editions of the Globe will offer more such material.
So
we have a mountain of arson and spraypainting directed against Jews,
and a molehill of arson and spraypainting directed against Muslims.
Is this simply a response to the current claims of an upsurge in antisemitism,
or passing amnesia about racism against other groups? To find out, I
checked Globe stories listed under the keyword 'hate crimes' in my university
library's database from 2001 to the present. My investigations were
probably incomplete, but a couple of things caught my attention.
There
are not a lot of reports specifically mentioning hate crimes. For the
time period covered, Native Canadians apparently have no problems at
all in this department. (Some teenagers shot up native homes with paintballs,
but this was found not to have been a hate crime.) Blacks seem to be
almost as fortunate: just one incident. This doesn't quite square with
the stories I've heard from black people. Are they liars? Whiners? And
what about other incidents involving Muslims? Was the Globe and Mail
more--even handed?
At
least no one was hurt in this year's events: not in the antisemitic
attacks the Globe found so horrifyingly important, not in the anti--Muslim
attack it found barely worthy of notice. It was not so ten days after
9--11. Here is the entire story:
"OTTAWA
ONT -- Police called for anonymous tips yesterday into a brutal hate
crime in which a Muslim teen was beaten unconscious last week by a
dozen white teens. "The 15--year--old Arabic boy was riding his
bicycle home in Orleans, just outside Ottawa, when he was swarmed
by a group of about 12 white teens. The teens told the boy he was
the reason for the World Trade Center terrorist attack and punched
and kicked him repeatedly. He was beaten unconscious and left for
five hours."
That's
right. The incident got 86 words on page 10 and no, I don't know what
an 'Arabic boy' is. There was, it is true, a longish general piece (757
words) on page 5 concerning the anti--Arab backlash. It does not mention
the beating, just a strangling attempt against a female Saudi doctor
in Montreal and some fires set at mosques and Sikh temples. (The fires
had received modest coverage earlier.) The next day the beating is mentioned
in a 865 word piece that made page 9. It contained Prime Minister's
Jean Chrétien's expressions of concern about attacks on Arabs
and others.* This clearly did not call for a banner headline across
page 1.
But
fear not! A few months later, on March 23, 2002, the Globe did see fit
to call the attention of its readers to hate crimes against Muslims,
telling us that "More than six months after the tragedy of Sept.
11, Arab and Muslim groups in Canada say their communities still live
in fear. An interim report card prepared by the Council on American--Islamic
relations indicated there have been 120 anti--Muslim hate incidents
across Canada since the terrorist attacks. They included 10 death threats,
13 cases of physical violence and 12 attacks on mosques and Islamic
centres." That's all it said. That's the whole story. Sixty--six
words on page 9.
But
the Globe and Mail isn't against Muslims. It simply regards them, for
whatever reason, as less important than Jews. What then of blacks, who
are so fortunate as to have been victim to only one newsworthy hate
crime?
On
July 28th, 2001, we learned that "On July 14, someone soaked a
cross in gasoline, pounded it into a black family's lawn then set it
ablaze." Someone had been charged. The quote is from a 119 word
story on page 6. On August 25th there was a 246 word item about how
a teenager had pled guilty to the crime. It mentioned that "The
RCMP initially treated the crime as property mischief, due to a number
of acts of vandalism in the area. But as the details of the cross burning
surfaced, residents and multicultural groups responded with outrage.
The Mounties quickly apologized for not treating the crime more seriously,
then assigned a full--time senior investigator to the case."**
I would have thought that worthy of an editorial, but then I don't have
the refined journalistic sensibilities of the professionals at the Globe
and Mail.
Some
comment did come on September 1st in the form of a Margaret Wente column.
Remember her, the one who excoriated racial hatred this past April 8th?
That was racial hatred against Jews. When blacks were the target, her
column began as follows:
"Memo
to Hedy Fry [Secretary of State for Multiculturalism]: It's official!
Someone has actually burned a cross in Canada. You've been vindicated.
"The hate--monger in question is an 18--year--old who lives in
Moncton. Last month, he allegedly set a gasoline--soaked cross ablaze
on the lawn of a black family in the middle of the night. The flames
were quickly doused by the neighbours, and, after a storm of outrage,
the teenaged boy was charged with a hate crime. Wisely, he immediately
pleaded guilty. "The kid may be just another stupid punk, but
he's a godsend to Canada's flourishing racism industry, which likes
to seize on every shred of evidence to prove how bad we are."
Yes,
Ms. Wente courageously savaged the whole racism scam, and, after dumping
on a conference held in Durban, asked us to reflect: "Think what
we could do if we shut down our whole government--funded racism industry."
In other words: "Buncha spoilt brats, those blacks."
Having
exhausted my capacity for comment, let alone detachment, I will simply
end with a question. Are your newspapers like mine?
----------------------------------------------
*
There was another passing reference to Chrétien's comments on
the incident in a page 7 story on September 25th.
**
A 263 word page 17 story reported the kid's conviction on October 11th.
Michael
Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent University in
Ontario, Canada. He can be reached at: mneumann@trentu.ca
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