Why do the major television networks - CNN, Fox News, and so on - allow themselves to be used as recruiting tools for terror networks?
Why do they permit themselves to carry messages for the worst people on the planet?
Because terror is big bucks for the news media, I suppose.
The reason the terrorists produce videos is because if they kill someone behind closed doors, only a handful of people will be affected.
If they release a video, then the whole world will be watching.
Which essentially creates an alignment of interests between terrorists and TV news producers.
CNN and MSNBC have terrible ratings these days. For CNN, it's almost as bad as when the network started, when people scoffed at the idea of 24-hour news and derided Ted Turner's vision as the Chicken Noodle Network.
Now the networks are playing chicken with each other, daring one another to air increasingly shocking video.
Call it Terror Porn.
Is it news? Perhaps. Is it giving aid and comfort to the enemy? Absolutely.
What if they had 24-hour news channels at other times in history?
Would we have aired footage from the crematoria in the death camps in Nazi Germany?
Or from the Cambodian holocaust?
Or from the Soviet Gulag?
The idea seems so absurd, so awful and unthinkable.
And yet, here we are, complacent as can be, not complaining for a moment when the news networks beam these horrific images into our homes, our gyms, wherever we - and our children - may be.
Why doesn't anyone question this?
I'm not saying, don't report the news. Of course, report it.
But don't be complicit in it.
Why do you have to sink to the level of the lowest slime on earth by airing their debauched videos?
Why do you have to honor these uncivilized people by broadcasting their faces day and night?
Why do we put up with the use of our broadcast spectrum - a publicly owned entity, incidentally - as a tool for those who would destroy our way of life?
I don't know much about social media, but I understand that hashtags are a way of attracting attention to a single idea.
What if there were a Twitter campaign based on the hashtag #StopTerrorPorn?
What if there were a groundswell of support for the idea that broadcasting the videos, still photos, and even the faces of our enemies is actually helping their cause?
I understand that terror is the primary tool of the movements that oppose freedom and dignity.
But terror shouldn't be a tool for driving ratings.
Pass it on.