To worldwide relief, Pastor Terry Jones has called off his plans to burn Qurans on September 11. But how is it that a man as misguided and unimportant as this can so easily get the planet’s attention? According to columnist Clovis Rossi of Brazil’s Folha, TV broadcasters are only too willing to cover a ‘show’ that warrants no one’s serious attention.
For Folha, Clovis Rossi writes in part:
The journalistic show that covers the planet has again made a spectacle of itself by offering time to a lunatic named Terry Jones, who invented a day for burning the Quran.
It’s obvious that this nut was seeking his 15 minutes of fame by launching a burn the Quran day. But he achieved to much more. On Wednesday, the Spanish newspaper El Pais printed the following headline at the top of its front page: “Worldwide Alarm after the Announcement of the Public Burning of Qurans on September 11th.”
This is what happens when journalism treats as relevant (and serious), news items that are nothing but folklore – dangerous, but folklore. At most, the case of “Pastor” Jones should be an item of “strange news,” beside Maradona’s threat to parade nude if Argentina became world champion.
Clearly, spectacle-journalism has hitched a ride with Islamophobia, which is an uncomfortable and disturbing trend – and not only in the United States. But to go from there to depicting a madman lost in Florida’s interior as representative of this trend pushes everything into an abyss.
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