Russian Bans ABC News--A Good Thing? or a Bad Thing?

MOSCOW — Russia's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday it will not renew permission for ABC-TV to operate in the country after the network broadcast an interview with a notorious Chechen warlord.

That's the lead-in to today's AP story headlined, "Russia Will Revoke ABC-TV's Permission."

For many, many months conservative bloggers have grumped and criticized American and other news networks for doing essentially the same thing in Iraq that ABC has been accused of doing in Russia. In Iraq, news "reporters" have embedded themselves with "insurgents" and have conducted interviews with their leaders all the while professing theirprivilegee and right to protect their "confidential sources."

Even before the war, Dan Rather took the time to conduct his now infamous "interview" with the former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Now the Russian government has gone ahead and done to ABC what some, but not all, conservative bloggers either demanded to be done in the United States or at least hoped would be done here.....censor them and prevent them, for national security reasons, from broadcasting the "enemy's"propagandaa in the guise of telling the "other side of the story."

Russia is nowpredictablyy catching a lot of flack from the Third Estate today for banning ABC.

According to Reuters,

The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists said: "This action reflects the Kremlin's growing intolerance of any kind of criticism, especially in regard to its actions in Chechnya."

CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper's statement said Russia was "clearly trying to intimidate foreign journalists into censoring their news reporting on the war in Chechnya. We call on the (foreign)ministry to reverse its decision immediately."

In Washington, even State Department spokesman Tom Casey chimed in, saying any decision that limited ABC's operations in Russia would be regrettable. "I think we believe that ABC as well as all other members of the media should have the opportunity for freedom of expression and have the right to report as they see fit," Casey said.

Andre Batitski, the journalist who conducted the interview with Shamil Basayev (who claims credit for numerous deadly attacks against Russians, including the Beslan assault that claimed the lives of at least 330 children and adults), believes that the Russian government was motivated by shame. "The security services are embarrassed because they have spent vast sums over six years but they still can't catch Basayev, and here he is talking to a journalist... this shows how ineffectively they are working," Babitski said.

All this aside, what do members of the conservative American blogosphere have to say about this subject today? Are we applauding the Russian government for doing what our government is unwilling to do? Or are we booing the ban as a clear violation of one of the fundamental pieces of the foundation of freedom?

Personally, I'm torn between the two. But war is war. And no government should be required to allow a member of a foreign press to move about restricted areas of their country without permission, meet privately with a sworn enemy of the state and a self-confessed andunrepentantt murderer of men, women and children, and then broadcast that interview on their public airwaves, providing the "criminal" a venue forpropagandaa and for spitting in the faces of those whose loved ones he has killed and every other Russian who he continues to threaten with promises of more deadly attacks in the future.

I guess that I can neither bring myself to condemn nor condone the decision of the Russian government to ban ABC. It seems to me that either decision would have been justifiable under the circumstances.

The decision is their's to make. They have made it.

To ABC I say, "Tough luck! You took a chance and lost. Live with it!"