Since When Do Journalists Have Sources With Al Qaeda?
As most of you probably know by know, the London Times has obtained the martyr video of leader 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. The video itself will be forthcoming (I don’t even want to see it), but in the meantime I found this passage from the Times article to be troubling:
The unedited video was passed to The Sunday Times through a previously tested channel. On condition of anonymity, sources from both Al-Qaeda and the United States have confirmed its authenticity. It has no sound — and lip-readers have failed to decipher it, according to a US source — but the images speak loudly for themselves.
Is it just me, or does it seem extremely inappropriate for journalists working for reputable news publications to have working relationships with al Qaeda terrorists? Like, pretty much as inappropriate as when ABC News decided to interview the mastermind of the Beslan massacre rather than turn his location over to authorities so that he could be captured.
I really don’t see an excuse to working with terrorists in this fashion, even if it is to get information from them to inform the public. Working with these terrorists in that fashion only grants a sense of legitimacy to their cause, makes them almost sort of mainstream in a way, and I don’t think we want the terrorists feeling that their extremist world views are legitimate or mainstream.
