Last week, Andrea Mitchell, senior foreign correspondent for NBC News, interviewed Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Teheran prior to his visit to the UN this upcoming week.  For the televised occasion, Ms. Mitchell wore a white headscarf that covered some of her very blonde hair and then dropped gracefully across her shoulder; Mr. Ahmadinejad wore a western suit with an open collared white shirt.  This is not the first time that western women have covered their heads when interviewing Muslim heads of state - Barbara Walters and Christiane Amanpour have done the same for their respective networks.  It makes me wonder why newsmen aren’t doffed with yarmulkes when interviewing Netanyahu.  After all, Ahmadinejad is not a religious figure, nor was the interview conducted in a house of worship, nor is the Iranian uncomfortable with being in the company of unveiled women in his various appearances at western universities, auditoriums and banquet halls.  Do viewers deserve to know whose protocol is being served?  Is it a concession that the network agrees to in order to get the interview or is it a politically correct assumption that networks make pre-emptively in order to appease Muslim expectations.

     The thrust of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments centered on his accusations that it is the Zionists (aka Jews) who are undermining American relations with Muslims.  Knowing this man’s insistence on holocaust denial and his often stated determination to eradicate Israel from the world map, one can only question what purpose is served by sending an American Jewish reporter to behave subserviently to an anti-semitic tyrant and to give him yet another photo-op for an invective rant.  How much interview time have NBC, ABC and CNN given to Terry Jones, Glenn Beck or Newt Gingrich?  The truth is that the networks understand that Ahmadinejad can be relied upon to spout predictable venom that won’t threaten their safety.  Airing the anti-semitic card seldom elicits repercussions beyond verbal response or rare threats of boycott whereas dissing Muslims carries the potential for far more volatile consequences.

     Can you recollect seeing western reporters bow or curtsy to western monarchs they are interviewing?  The veiled women reporters are symbols of network capitulation to Muslim sensibilities.  In our western society with its separation of church and state so strenuously supported by our media, it is particularly befuddling to see token obeisance to leaders who are totally antagonistic to us.  Genuflecting to barbarians is an invitation to a beheading.  We have already seen the willingness to carry that beyond its metaphoric significance in the fate of Daniel Pearl.  What greater lesson do the networks need?

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