US: Don’t Step on Freedom of the Press Abroad

[Commentary] Secretary of State John Kerry recently met in Jidda, Saudi Arabia to mobilize Arab nation support for the US-led effort to destroy the Sunni extremist group that is known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). According to The New York Times, a senior State Department official speaking before the meeting with Arab foreign ministers said Kerry planned to not only ask the Arab states to increase their public condemnations of ISIS, but also to “ask them to use their state-owned media, too.”

The Times said the official specifically mentioned two prominent news channels in the Middle East -- Al Jazeera in Qatar and Al Arabiya (owned by the Saudis but based in Dubai) as potentially part of this strategy for combatting ISIS through nationally owned media. Although media clearly are part of modern warfare, perhaps even more critical in an era of stateless terrorism and social media fluency, the U.S. should not be advancing the notion of having these news organizations slant their coverage to suit a particular foreign policy outcome, however admirable.