A little controversy goes a long way

The pastor from a little-known extremist Baptist church in America took to the streets of Washington and burned a copy of the Koran, posting a video of the event on Youtube.

But this isn’t 2010, this is 2008, when the congregation of Westboro Baptist Chuch, Kansas (notorious for their homophobic picketing of the funerals of US soldiers), decided to bring further controversy to their church. However, this event attracted little media attention, no international outrage, no press conferences, no comments from the president. Nothing.
Sometimes it is good to give controversial, extremist figures a platform on which to hang themselves. I’ll point to last years spectacle of the BNP’s Nick Griffin on Question Time as a prime example, a party which was seeing a certain amount of popular growth, but failed to gain traction in the popular vote.
However, in this case the media has taken what should have been a sad and embarrassing display of religious extremism, Pastor Terry Jones burning a Koran alone in his back garden alone, and instead given Mr Jones a voice and a credible platform.
The rest of the story as they say is history, protests in Afghanistan, political outrage and finally insurmountable pressure on Mr Jones to cancel his hateful act against the worlds 1.2 billion Muslims.
But if he had not decided to cancel, it is safe to assume that lives would have been lost. And in my opinion, the media would have been to blame. Actions have consequences, and sensationalist headlines written purely to cause controversy and gain attention often lead to real people suffering.
And here’s the real issue, the media has great power in the modern world, but with this comes a responsibility as well. Sometimes the media stands on the right side of this line, allowing figures such as Nick Griffin and David Irving, a proponent of holocaust denial, to have their share of the limelight as it is often the best way to discredit them. Both figures had a radical reputations and controversial beliefs, both of which failed to stand up to scrutiny. However giving these figures a moment in the spotlight is not always the best way to deal with them, sometimes they just need to be ignored.
Want another example of the media hyping controversy? The recent debate over the so-called ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ has once again ignited an international debate. This is despite the fact that this Islamic Community Centre is being built two blocks away from ground zero, yet the media still refer to it as being a ground zero mosque’. And finally the media might want to remind themselves that there was a Muslim prayer room on the 17th floor of the World Trade Centre’s second tower, because some of those hard-working American men-in-suits who lost their lives on September 11th were in fact Muslim.
Now we all know that the media love a sensational story, however it is important to keep perspective. The tabloid headlines from these two stories have led to real-world suffering, peoples lives have been affected by the events caused by the media's hunt for sensationalism. When the countries 'free press' is largely comprised of re-written press releases handed out by a few large organisations such as the Press Association, the lack of actual journalistic research is staggering.
The message here is not to assume everything you read has been researched as thoroughly as you might have thought.