Media — the Fourth Estate — in Societies

-        Bravo to that American journalist (Matt Lee) - (Mathew Lee), Associated Press correspondent at the U.S. Department of State for more than 13 years, when he asked the spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State (Ned Price), during a State Department press briefing on Wednesday 3-3-2021, about the U.S. government’s rejection of the International Criminal Court’s decision, represented by the Prosecutor, Ms. (Fatou Bensouda), and the judge to commence investigations in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 into the possibility of war crimes by Israeli military and civilian officials in those areas occupied by Israel, when (Matt Lee) posed a question to State Department spokesman Ned Price saying: if you reject Palestinians bringing complaints either as a state (which the United States questioned as to the Palestinians’ qualification as a state) or as individuals... to the International Criminal Court... where do you think the Palestinians should go to present their cases in search of justice?

-        If you oppose their going to the International Criminal Court.....! Should they go to Israeli courts....("Where should the Palestinian go for justice and accountability if they couldn’t rely on the ICC?") — that is, the International Criminal Court — and the State Department spokesman did not answer the question, attempting to declare U.S. support for human rights (to avoid a direct answer), and support for a two-state solution, a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, and when Matt Lee did not receive an answer, he repeated his question 12 times within earshot of the journalists and the spokesman... amid a commotion among the journalists surprised by the lack of an answer..!.. but without an answer.. A video of the referenced press briefing was broadcast..... on 4-3-2021 – the day after the State Department press briefing... and tens of thousands of followers interacted with this video on social media..., which I personally reviewed the contents of dozens of responses to, and their tweets on Twitter, most of them foreigners, pouring out their anger at the lack of an answer, and at the journalist’s right to obtain an answer to his logical question..(where do the Palestinians go to file complaints?), and in most of their remarks they sympathize with the Palestinians who have suffered under Israeli occupation... since 1967.!

-        A logical and courageous journalistic question.. and this is not new, for one of the spokesmen of the Israeli lobby in the United States (AIPAC), in describing this bold journalist, in an earlier debate with the State Department spokesman, called him a (bulldozer)... and the American journalist Matt Lee’s exchange in an earlier press debate about the Palestinians was that the White House would not allow the Palestinians to be accepted as intellectual property members in UNESCO as a state, threatening that the United States of America would withdraw from that organization... if the Palestinians were accepted as a member state... and they are not qualified — according to the spokesman’s claim —, to which Matt Lee replied that it is not logical that the Palestinians should not be accepted into UNESCO for culture and science under individual ownership..., and the continuation of this U.S. opposition will lead such opposition to extend to opposing the Palestinians’ membership, for example, in the World Meteorological Organization and the International Civil Aviation Organization, etc... and this is not fair..!!

-        The responses of this journalist in several scenes during State Department press briefings have created awareness, public opinion, and enlightenment about the reality of the injustice experienced by the occupied Palestinian people, and have generated questions about what is happening.... This enlightening mobilization, created by the question of this courageous American journalist..... the Arab League is incapable of revealing its like, or creating such awareness... and a global public opinion that is of fundamental benefit to the Palestinian cause........!

-        In this regard, Dr. Mohammad Shtayyeh, Prime Minister of Palestine, praised the courage of this American journalist.

-        The influential role played by the media, and especially journalism, in disseminating knowledge, raising awareness, enlightening, shaping opinion, directing public opinion, creating issues, and representing the people clarifies that calling the press the Fourth Estate is a factual reality, and it is the force that influences the people and equals or surpasses the power of the government in defending and protecting the people and its constitution..!

-        We give an example here of the power of the press’s influence in a society like American society: the case of President Richard Nixon — the president who was toppled by the "Watergate" scandal, in which The Washington Post was the sponsor of the campaign led by two widely circulated newspaper journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, in 1971. President Nixon then resigned after being surrounded by continuing investigations and the expanding circles of those investigations... which were essentially accusing him of wiretapping and espionage from the White House during his presidency on the premises and calls of members of the Democratic Party... while Nixon was from the Republican Party. The American president attempted to evade handing over tapes related to evidence of the wiretapping issue, but he handed over those tapes, deleting sensitive clips from them, claiming they were deleted by mistake. However, the newspaper (The Washington Post) continued by providing information it obtained from its reliable sources as it turned out.... to federal agencies, until the president announced his resignation on 8-8-1974.. He was tried afterward.. but the next president, Gerald Ford, issued him a pardon for health reasons..!!

-        We long for media and journalism that have influence and an independent voice, not journalism that echoes and adopts the official narrative and voice in a boring manner; free press is a tremendous force for protecting freedom and democracy, protecting the constitution, enforcing the law, and curbing corruption in public office, without panic here or there in any society!

-        We must support and strive to create an enabling environment for a free press that includes all actors in society in raising the level of freedom, protecting the rights of the people, and spreading genuine democracy...... and the press must not remain muzzled, repeating official copies of the narrative of events.... At the same time the government must entrench press freedom in a real way, back it, and keep it free of the role of a censor that forces the press to speak to itself and not to the people, or to the final say, in such atmospheres of censorship.. and the press must refrain from repeating the phrase "Yes, sir"...!!

-        Date: 11-3-2021