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Friday, June 6, 2008

Richard Landes has a translation and fisking of a letter written by a passel of French journalists in defense of Master Charles Enderlin: What Checks and Balances to the Fourth Estate: Appeal for Charles Enderlin Poses the Question. Richard reports that the comments in French at a site where this letter is posted are no more supportive than the almost universal scorn Larry Derfner received in response to his JPost piece -- a good sign.

BTW, Richard has also posted a fisking of an email exchange of Derfner's: Help for the Drowning: Derfner Wrestles with the Data

4 Comments

Thanks for the coverage on this. It seems as though the heads are exploding in editorial offices all over France!
I have more of a slash and burn look at these self-serving twits at http://breathofthebeast.blogspot.com/2008/06/note-from-french-lunatic-asylum.html

You just beat me to linking that. Thanks for taking a look.

Methinks The Fourth Estate doth protest too much.

Seriously they have blood on their hands.

I can understand their defense of Enderlin on two counts: his status as a highly respected journalist, and of course the less exalted fact that the MSM are heavily invested in being "right" and of course in "maintaining access;" finally there is the journalists' self-regard as A Force For Truth.

It is embarrassing to be caught, at best, having made an awful mistake.

But: wouldn't it be more in the progressive spirit, the spirit of journalistic fairness and truth, to face this situation head on? I think the issue of access needs to be acknowledged; we saw it during the Hezbollah war, when it was painfully obvious CNN pieces were being totally stage-managed by Hezbollah, there was staging and even manipulation of photographs, etc. This goes back much further, it was discussed by several journalists during the Lebanese Civil War. Many journalists have been attacked - maimed and killed - in Lebanon and elsewhere around the world.

Now these attempts to limit or distort freedom of expression has apparently affected even the UN Human Rights Council:

UN Human Rights Council Under Fire From Newspaper Body

By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
June 06, 2008

(CNSNews.com) - A campaign by Islamic states to use the U.N. Human Rights Council as a tool to limit free expression when Islam is criticized is drawing fresh condemnation.

An international newspaper industry conference, meeting in Sweden this week, passed a resolution saying that the council's "role is to defend freedom of expression and not to support the censorship of opinion at the request of autocracies."

The criticism by the World Association of Newspapers (WAM) board, representing 18,000 newspapers, focused on a measure passed by the Human Rights Council in late March.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200806/FOR20080606a.html

Read it all.

This is something we should ALL be concerned about, and it's more important than any one particular story - but it does give some backdrop to the Enderlin situation.

Dog bites man. The Fourth Estate, in large and critical measure, has been a circled wagon for well over forty years now.

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