The PRESS Bullseye

There are two stories today about the press being attacked by the Taliban and ISIS [ Amiri and Stancati, Seven Die in  Kabul Car Bomb Targeting TV Network Staff, Wall Street Journal, and O'Donnell, IS Radio Beams Propaganda, Threats Across Rural Afghanistan, Associated Press, both today ].  Both of these groups, by the way, also attack each other.  If you are confused by this, you should be.  A free press does not benefit either one of them, but what both of these groups have recognized is that a free press can hurt them.

Both of them rely on a good number of donations from Muslim charities and customers for products they sell.    People who donate are a lot like political groups that solicit money for a particular candidate.  If the candidate goes off the deep end and says, "Kill all non-believers" and the definition of non-believer includes Shia Muslims, you can bet they won't get much money from that source.  We had something similar when Donald Trump decided to say he wanted to stop Muslims from coming to the United States until they examined the vetting process being used.  The opposition party jumped on that quickly and made it sound like he was against all Muslims coming here.  What a free press does is publicize what those people say, both privately and in public, and amplify the message.

Sometimes, groups don't like their message coming back to them.  ISIS and the Taliban are not friends to very many people these days, yet seem to stay in business.  How that happens is a frequent subject of a free press.  They get their operating budgets from a number of people who support them, not just from oil or extortion.  What the press does is get that kind of information out.  When they attack each other and make statements about rightness of their causes, they alienate their potential supporters.  A free press amplifies their messages.  ISIS has alienated just about everyone except extremists who make up their mass.  In the end, it will be their undoing.