Michelle Malkin, conservative columnist for the New York Post, Townhall.com, and Fox News, recently released a book called In Defense of Internment. The book argues that the internment and detention of Japanese Americans in concentration camps was justified based on intelligence that was only available to the very top tier of U.S. Government at the time. Her argument is that profiling based on race in this case was justified by military necessity, contrary to the historical research of the vast, overwhelming majority of historians over the past 60 years. Law prof Eric Muller along with historian Greg Robinson have been challenging the central thesis of her book, pointing out a number of inaccuracies and historical contradictions. The amassed list of criticisms is worth reading, and you can find responses from Malkin at at her blog.. You have to search around, as she hasn’t been kind enough to put together a response page… best thing to do is to match up the dates or just use the links Muller provides (he tends to link to her responses).

Anywho, this whole entire thing was background for those of you who weren’t following the hubbub surrounding the book release. The real reason I’m writing this is to highlight Eric Muller’s latest post on this topic. It’s about how news programs decide what to put on air and provides this hypothetical:

[Timothy Burke] attributes Malkin’s success in drawing uncritical attention from the major media to two things: (a) her saying something contrarian about a matter of current interest, and (b) her being mediagenic.

…

Let’s consider a hypothetical. Suppose an author were to publish a book revisiting the pogroms across Germany in November of 1938 that we know as “

Kristallnacht.” Suppose that author’s thesis went something like this: “Yes, German and Austrian Jews certainly and regrettably suffered in the attacks of November 9 and 10, 1938, and in the incarceration of some 26,000 in concentration camps for a period of many weeks that followed. We have seen, time and again, the images of the broken storefront windows and the burning synagogues that the Jewish grievance community and politically correct academics want us to see. We have been led to believe that this was an unprovoked outburst of baseless hatred on the part of the German people. But what Jews and academics do not tell you, and do not want you to know, is that the so-called Kristallnacht had a real cause: A Jew did, in fact, murder the German official Ernst vom Rath in Paris on November 7, 1938, at the German Embassy, and documents from the time show that Josef Goebbels knew this and saw the murder as proof of a larger Jewish threat to the Reich.”

…

So, to return to Timothy Burke’s observation: suppose that a mediagenic author were to publish such a work. Would MSNBC, CNBC, Fox, C-SPAN, HBO, and countless radio programs present that work at all? If they did so, would they present it uncritically, and without rebuttal?

Of course they wouldn’t. And so the question is: why the difference?

He disclaims the typical objections to using any Holocaust history as one side of an analogy, but the point is interesting in and of itself. We have a huge body of historical research (not just “established thinking” as Malkin characterizes it) and evidence that shows that the MAGIC cables did not, alone, justify the internment policy. Yet, she gets major media attention for a book that does a poor job challenging the history. Yet, we have the same body of evidence for the Holocaust, but Holocaust revisionists get no airtime or media attention.

Personally, I would posit two additional theories in addition to Muller’s serious one, both born of cynicism.

The first is that we’re witnessing the Fox News effect. It is, by far and away, the highest rated cable news network and their success is causing CNN and MSNBC to react. Malkin would’ve made Fox News because her book, at it’s core, is about justifying racial profiling of brown skinned folk (like me) and/or profiling or tagging Muslims or people from Arab and/or Muslim countries. She would’ve made it on there, so CNN and MSNBC might’ve felt pressure to have her on as well. She’s also mainstream, so that explains more of it.

The second reason is just that the networks are sensitive to ratings… bringing up a Holocaust denier (unless it’s a Gibson) will most likely be met with the most furious of public responses, as the Holocaust is part of our national memory. Popular movies, books, photographs, etc. all have exposed many, many people to the realities of the Holocaust. On the other hand, little is really known about Japanese-American internment. Also, people didn’t really die in the internment case. The fury, therefore, will only come from a diminished voice. It’s unfortunate, but in the ratings battle, TV will stir controversy as long as it doesn’t reap a whirlwind of outrage afterwards.

I’d be interested in other thoughts…

Update: I wanted to clarify the next to last paragraph above… I don’t mean to imply that Fox News is explicitly racist, just that I’ve heard commentators on Fox News bring these things up. I also didn’t mention that she would’ve made Fox News because she’s under contract with them, so getting on was a given. I’ve left my original entry as is for now.