-♻RetweetVOA disgrace
Tue, Jul 2, 2002 at 9:17:15 am PDT
Noted authority on Islamic terrorism Stephen Schwartz has been fired from his job at the new Middle East radio network at The Voice of America, apparently because the State Department didn’t like his criticisms of our “allies” the Saudis.
Schwartz had gone to VOA expecting to find himself part of an established outfit that followed the rules of journalist’s culture; instead he found what he now calls an "absolute dictatorship of political correctness." His superiors berated him for taking part in a VOA online talk program on the funding of terrorist funding of Islamic charities, on the grounds that he was moving away from journalistic standards; his column in The New York Post on Richard Reid and John Walker Lindh was criticized for his harsh evaluation of their actions. Moreover, he was told that he had to take his name off two recent articles criticizing the Saudis which appeared in The Weekly Standard, even though he never identified himself as a VOA employee or spokesman for their network in his articles, but rather, as an independent observer who had written a soon to be published book, The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa’ud from Tradition to Terror. Evidently, to the people who now run the VOA, toadying to the Saudis is more important than allowing the network to air anything which reveals the role played behind the scenes by the Saudi government in sponsoring terrorism, which would interfere with State’s diplomatic approach to the Saudis.
Frank says:
