{"id":12958,"date":"2011-11-29T16:25:24","date_gmt":"2011-11-30T00:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=12958"},"modified":"2011-11-29T16:25:24","modified_gmt":"2011-11-30T00:25:24","slug":"sam-husseini-on-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/29\/sam-husseini-on-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Husseini on Journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple weeks ago <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/18\/memo-proper-journalists-ought-to-be-subservient-to-power\/\">I posted a blog<\/a> with the story and video of journalist Sam Husseini who asked a Saudi official a tough question and was subsequently suspended from the National Press Club. The incident was not only indicative of the embarrassing journalistic culture in this country &#8211; one that instinctively gushes deference to authority as opposed to strict scrutiny &#8211; but it was also an indication of the Good Guys\/Bad Guys reality of U.S. foreign policy. Saudi Arabia is one of our most highly valued allies, you see&#8230;we&#8217;re supposed to be nice to them and whitewash their tyranny because, you know&#8230;our betters in Washington support it.<\/p>\n<p>Husseini has written <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fpif.org\/blog\/how_questioning_the_saudi_regimes_legitimacy_got_me_suspended_by_the_national_press_club?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FPIF%2Fblog+%28FPIF+Focal+Points+Blog%29\">a piece on the incident and it can be read at Foreign Policy in Focus<\/a>. Here are excerpts on what he thinks about journalism:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Journalism is in crisis and it must be reinvented for its own good and for the good of society as a whole. A substantial part of that re-invention is the capacity to ask tough questions of powerful officials. Being a journalist in essence isn&#8217;t about &#8220;credentials&#8221; and professional affiliations. It&#8217;s about the practice of it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Real journalism is asking tough questions of all the players. Or, more appropriately, asking the toughest questions of the most powerful. Too often, I&#8217;ve seen reporters fawn over a figure more the more powerful they are. That I think is exactly the wrong instinct.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;The Ethics Committee, despite the secretive process, has an opportunity to rescind my suspension and issue an apology. Hopefully the members will do the right thing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple weeks ago I posted a blog with the story and video of journalist Sam Husseini who asked a Saudi official a tough question and was subsequently suspended from the National Press Club. The incident was not only indicative of the embarrassing journalistic culture in this country &#8211; one that instinctively gushes deference to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-12958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12959,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12958\/revisions\/12959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12958"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}