Should Rabin murderer Yigal Amir be interviewed?

Should Yitzhak Rabin murderer Yigal Amir be interviewed?

Larry Butchins says, "No!"

 

Yigal Amir and the Media

There is a media feeding frenzy going about Yigal Amir's telephone interview with two TV channels. And now two leading (left-leaning) journalists have published conflicting views about whether the channels were right about pulling the interviews from their broadcast schedule after having widely publicized that they were going to be aired. Did the channels just cave in to public opinion and the dictates of higher authority, discarding journalistic integrity?

Right or Wrong: - IMHO - both. BUT...and it's a ginormous "BUT"...

Let's look at the interviews from a purely journalistic point of view first:

in my days as a reporter, would I have given my eye teeth to have an interview with a murderer - especially such a high profile murderer as this one? You betcha!!!!

But back in those days, we had what we used to call journalistic ethics (!!!???- what?) The first question that my editors would have asked - and which I would have had to ask myself - was: "Is it in the public interest?" If the potential story failed this acid test, then it was canned right at the outset - BEFORE the interview even took place.

Then there are other questions that would have supported the final decision: Why was the individual in question granting the interview - or seeking the interview - in the first place? For self-aggrandisement? For publicity for his spurious cause? A positive answer to any of these questions would have caused it to be spiked there and then.

 

Continued: Yigal Amir and the Media