Where should a newspaper draw the line between what is acceptable for its op-ed pages and what is not? Put another way, how many lies should be permissible before an op-ed page editor says, “You know what? We’re not publishing this.”
Whatever the answer, an op-ed by Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh in today’s Washington Post provides a good test case. Ed Morrissey went through it line by line and found some half-truth or distortion in almost every paragraph.
Dave Gerstman rounded up the blog coverage and raised another question regarding the Post’s decision to publish: Why give such a prominent platform to someone who espouses a terrorist ideology? Gerstman links to the old Margaret Thatcher quote, “Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.”
These days, such nations are getting no help from their national media.