Dan Abrams Hits At Amanpour And CNN
Wow - last night MSNBC host (and network GM) Dan Abrams took aim at CNN's Christiane Amanpour for her much-touted and well-rated three-part series, "God's Warriors," wherein Amanpour explores religious fundamentalism in the Middle East from the perspective of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Abrams, as it turns out, wasn't a fan: "CNN should have called it what it was: A defense of Islamic fundamentalism and the worst type of moral relativism."
Here's more:
For each of three nights, CNN devoted two hours to the, quote, "warriors" of each religion: Jewish, Christian and Muslim. But rather than distinguish between Islamic terrorists who utilize fierce violence to achieve warped goals, and the merely fiercely religious or even just those who fiercely believe in the state of Israel, Christiane Amanpour avoided getting bogged down in objectivity. Christians and Jews, for example, who support Israel's strategy for self-defense are just as much God's warriors, according to Amanpour, as the Islamic radicals who blow themselves and others up in an effort to destroy the world as we know it. A handful of the most radical of the Jews and Christians who can almost all be identified by name are highlighted. The violent Islamic fundamentalists are, quote, "understood," with no comparable effort to "understand" the evangelical Christians or Israelis.
Abrams noted this particular setup by Amanpour:
AMANPOUR: Muslims, like people everywhere, abhor terrorism. The small minority who resorts to violence is symptomatic of something many of us have failed to understand: the impact of God's Jewish warriors goes far beyond these rocky hills. The Jewish settlements have inflamed much of the Muslim world.
These issues are wildly divisive and super controversial, but that's a construction that begins with a sense of Muslim peacability and ends with Jewish culpability, implying that whatever has rocked that naturally peaceful boat is attributable to "the impact of God's Jewish warriors." Abrams rightly notes that undercurrent of blame.
It's a thoughtful and smart deconstruction, noting how Amanpour casts Muslims as victims of post-9/11 discrimination (which, as Abrams notes, is a point well taken, except not central to the examination of fundamentalist warrior culture which, er, existed before 9/11).
I did not see Amanpour's series so my ability to critique it begins and ends at whatever Abrams showed — presumably himself selectively, obviously. I can say, however, that the framing as excerpted by Abrams seems markedly (and surprisingly, I will say) slanted toward an equalization of the three groups of warriors, not necessarily with regard to their membership, and their methods. That, howver, is my take on Abrams' take on Amanpour's take — so go ahead and have yours: Video courtesy of CAMERA here; transcript courtesy of NewsBusters here.
Related:
Christiane Amanpour's God's Warriors, "the Jews," and "the Occupied Territories": Is this for Real? [HuffPo]
Loading comments…
Huffington Post | Rachel Sklar
First Posted: 08-28-07 12:29 PM | Updated: 03-28-08 02:44 AM