“Our media are completely lost in a wilderland of moral equivalence, eagerly prostituting themselves to monsters and terrorists.”

July 10, 2007 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26199_What_the_Hell_is_Wrong_with_the_Los_Angeles_Times&only

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Our media are completely lost in a wilderland of moral equivalence, eagerly prostituting themselves to monsters and ter…" by Charles Foster Johnson?
Charles Foster Johnson photo
Charles Foster Johnson 49
American musician 1953

Related quotes

John Rhys-Davies photo

“We have lost our moral compass completely, and unless we find it, we’re going to lose our civilization.”

John Rhys-Davies (1944) Welsh actor

Context: There is an extraordinary silence in the West. Basically, Christianity in the Middle East and in Africa is being wiped out – I mean not just ideologically but physically, and people are being enslaved and killed because they are Christians. And your country and my country (Wales) are doing nothing about it.... This is a unique age. We don't want to be judgmental. Every other age that's come before us has believed exactly the opposite. I mean, T. S. Eliot referred to 'the common pursuit of true judgement.' Yes, that's what it's about. Getting our judgments right, getting them accurate.... We have lost our moral compass completely, and unless we find it, we’re going to lose our civilization. I think we're going to lose Western European Christian civilization anyway.

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The media themselves are the avant-garde of our society. Avant-garde no longer exists in painting, music and poetry, it's the media themselves.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1990s and beyond, A McLuhan Sourcebook (1995), p. 274

Donald J. Trump photo
Asif Ali Zardari photo

“Journalists are bigger terrorists than terrorists themselves.”

Asif Ali Zardari (1955) politician in Pakistan

Zardari's frustration on Pakistani media during an address to businessmen from NWFP, Islamabad (2009-01-20).

William Gibson photo

“There is always a point at which the terrorist ceases to manipulate the media gestalt.”

William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre

Official blog at williamgibsonbooks.com (31 October 2004) http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/2004_10_01_archive.asp
Context: There is always a point at which the terrorist ceases to manipulate the media gestalt. A point at which the violence may well escalate, but beyond which the terrorist has become symptomatic of the media gestalt itself. Terrorism as we ordinarily understand it is innately media-related.

George W. Bush photo

“No act of the terrorists will change our purpose, or weaken our resolve, or alter their fate. Their cause is lost; free nations will press on to victory.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Mission Accomplished (May 2003)

Richard Wright photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Daniel Salamanca photo
Andrew Sullivan photo

“Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder — just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they commit.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"The Abolition of Torture" http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=dcGGvZpeEnhgPCp2PwTGAy%3D%3D, The New Republic (19 December 2005)
Context: Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder — just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they commit.
And, if they are human, then they must necessarily not be treated in an inhuman fashion. You cannot lower the moral baseline of a terrorist to the subhuman without betraying a fundamental value. That is why the Geneva Conventions have a very basic ban on "cruel treatment and torture," and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" — even when dealing with illegal combatants like terrorists. That is why the Declaration of Independence did not restrict its endorsement of freedom merely to those lucky enough to find themselves on U. S. soil — but extended it to all human beings, wherever they are in the world, simply because they are human.

Related topics