JUST LET THEM TALK

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2019/11/23/just-let-them-talk/

Donald Trump is known for many things, including his discriminatory policies. Several years before he became President, his company Trump Management was sued by the Department of Justice for discrimination against African-American tenants on its properties. So, perhaps the reason why the President is so critical of the newspaper The New York Times today has to do with the fact that its Executive Editor since 2014 Dean Baquet is black, the first black man to serve in this capacity. Although he is known for abusing journalists generally, Mr Trump has frequently criticised the Times in particular, saying earlier this year that the White House would stop subscribing to the newspaper, adding that he would also direct federal agencies to follow suit.

The New York Times is the winner of 127 Pulitzer prizes, a greater number than any other newspaper in the world. It has a wide international readership and has been ranked at number three in circulation within the USA.

Noam Chomsky said that The New York Times was the first thing he looked at in the morning, that “Despite all its flaws— and they’re real— it still has the broadest, the most comprehensive coverage of I think any newspaper in the world.”

Returning to the President, Mr Trump has been accused of racism as well as sexism, yet Mr Baquet, himself a Pulitzer Prize winner for investigative reporting, has refused to call the President ‘racist’ or ‘sexist’.

Jim Waterson, Media Editor for The Guardian questioned Mr Baquet about this in an interview, at which Mr Baquet raised an important point. He said he did not believe in making value judgments and putting them into words. In other words, he said that he did not believe in ‘branding’ people. He said his job was to “cover the world with tremendous curiosity” not to act in opposition to the President. He said he was not in a position to know if the President said the things he did because he was a racist and a sexist or because he was trying to “stoke his base”, because he was not in his– Mr Trump’s– head.

“I will tell you the most powerful writing I’ve ever seen about race, as a black man who grew up in the south, did not use the word ‘racist’. It quoted people saying what they had to say, and described the world they live in. And you made your own judgment. And the judgment was pretty clear. And I think that’s the way to write about Donald Trump and everybody else. It’s just to let them talk.”

And we hear this talk. It is a problem that few people seem to know how to use what they hear to arrive at the right decision, since people are taught to react to certain catchphrases, and politicians learn to use this habit.

Baquet’s suggestion to ‘let them talk’ is a powerful concept. It would be an interesting exercise to apply the idea to the many things people say and then to see what you end up thinking about them. What would you think about Maulana Fazlur Rehman, for example, when he declares the entire country to be his war zone, in a war that would end only when the government falls. Do such statements make you question just how much the Maulana values peace, democracy and the well-being of the people of this country? If not, they should.

This is a thing that ought to be taught; how to listen closely, and to assess persons based on their actions rather than on superfluous things. If this were to become more common the fact that a leader spent time and resources for the welfare of the people should raise him in people’s opinion, but that he elects the persons he does to important office would bring him down. And that he was once a dashing international star would hold very little water.

How is a democracy to succeed when people have no idea how to judge the worth of a public figure, so they may decide who is to lead them? How is anything rational to be achieved when a few strategically used Arabic words and the mention of some historical religious figures raises people beyond criticism, and the label kafir (disbeliever) or murtid (apostate), is enough to condemn a person to death? The first could be true of Mr Qadri, and the second of Abdul Sattar Edhi.

If such throw away words, such cleverly used accusations, can easily obtain approval or condemnation, then government, judiciary, the country, and the life of its people….everything is at risk, and it is.