Do You Condemn Piers Morgan?
The Islamophobe Doesn't Care About Palestine - He Cares About Ratings
Piers Morgan is an Islamophobe.
This was arguable before the crisis in Gaza.
However, now, it has become patently obvious during its grueling and gruesome 75 days.
Even more, Morgan is a parasitic brand of Islamophobe. One that feeds off of Arab and Muslim bodies for personal benefit. And his benefit alone.
His program “Uncensored” on Talk TV has emerged into one of the most popular programs addressing Gaza on western corporate media outlets during this stretch. This is by no accident. But a design concocted by Morgan and salacious media maven Rupert Murdoch, who seized upon an going human tragedy for economic opportunity.
Gift Pro-Palestinian journalism to a student this Christmas
Morgan’s coverage of Gaza is, in essence, a story about yellow journalism turned into disaster capitalism. A grand media narrative whereby Arab and Muslim bodies slain in Palestine and interviewed live on air are both the objects of economic exploitation.
Early on in the crisis, Morgan and his Talk TV overlords found treasure in human tragedy. Namely, they discovered that his string of Muslims guests – from Mohamed Hijab to Bassem Youssef – were generating more views and higher ratings. His interview with Youssef became the show’s most popular interview ever, spawning a prolonged encore that sought to desperately grab more views.
On one hand, blowhard debating and controversy sells. But even more, audiences on mainstream media outlets were starved for pro-Palestinian perspectives, particularly on terrestrial media airwaves (like CNN or the BBC) that all but erased them.
Morgan, always the clout chaser, saw opportunity in objectifying Muslim guests on air. Then swiftly seized it. Not for the journalistic purpose of providing a balanced analysis on Gaza, or the altruistic aim of amplifying silenced voices, but eyeballs and ratings.
Or, in today’s currency of digital media success: views.
Morgan, like his boss Murdoch, is chasing the bag. Particularly with Talk TV’s ratings’ struggles, and its signature show, Uncensored, failing, “to draw in a notable number of viewers when compared to GB News, Sky News and BBC News.”
Talk TV and Morgan’s new show, before the crisis, were failing miserably.
Gaza provided an opportunity for Morgan and Murdoch to lift a sinking ship. Namely, by inviting Arab and Muslims guests onto his show, and converting the spill of Palestinian blood in Gaza into digital ratings’ gold.
This economic Islamophobia undergirds the uncensored bigotry Morgan demonstrates almost daily on his program.
“Do you condemn Hamas?” has emerged into his catch-phrase on air, and among nearly two billion Muslims globally, his new brand.
Morgan asks this question over and over again. Bullying his Arab and Muslim guests into a corner, until he receives a “yes” or “no” response to a question that deserves nuance, context, and care.
The objective is clear: entrap Arab and Muslim guests into a corner whereby they must choose between explicitly supporting a legally proscribed terrorist organization in the United States and the United Kingdom, where Uncensored is filmed. Or condemn a group conflated wholly with the Palestinian people of Gaza, the Islamophobic terms of the debate Morgan perpetuates by fetishizing over a question underscored by bigotry and the categorical eschewing of context.
If Morgan were genuinely interested in pro-Palestinian perspectives, and particularly those voiced by Arab and Muslim guests, Uncensored would grapple with the conditions that gave rise to Hamas; the intensified violence in the West Bank where the group is not present; or the unhinged genocidal violence in Gaza that has claimed more than 20,000 lives in less than 3 months’ time.
However, Morgan does not consider the systematic killing of Palestinians in Gaza as a genocide. Even more, he does not seem to even know the true legal definition of genocide.
During a December 15 interview with Dilly Hussein, Morgan flat-headedly claimed that a genocide was the commission of the “complete eradication of a people.”
This is false. Further, it demonstrates either selective application of the term or utter ignorance of its legal definition.
The United Nations defines genocide as a crime “committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.”
The key prongs here are: (1) intent and (2) destroy a group, in whole or in part.
Morgan forgot that part.
Certainly, both prongs are satisfied by the Israeli military’s use of dumb bombs, decimation of infrastructure, and “thinning out” strategy of Gaza that has displaced 90% and killed more than 1% of the entire population.
Despite the fatality, destruction, and displacement figures being far less in Ukraine, Morgan dubbed that crisis a genocide while abstaining to apply it to Gaza.
Bigots lie. Numbers don’t.
Morgan is keen to echo how “I give pro-Palestinian voices more airtime than any other show” or “I opposed the illegal war on Iraq,” to assert his non-Islamophobic bona fides. However, the latter is hardly a claim anybody should boast about, but a position that history has revealed to be undebatable.
For the former, it is clear that Morgan unsees Palestinians slain in Gaza as real victims warranting the condemnation of genocide. The number of dead children, women, and men will not change that position. Or, as they skyrocket by the day, are yet to change that view.
The only views that matter, for Morgan, when it comes to Palestine are his ratings.
Whether objects shot down by Israeli tanks or on-air guests shot down by trite ultimatums, Morgan’s primary Palestinian concern is topping views and bottom lines.
On air, he actively seeks to entrap Arab and Muslim guests into legal trouble. Or, as shamefully displayed when he interviewed a Muslim physician, lobbying for them to get fired on air and online.
Arabs, Palestinians, and Muslims, for Morgan, are only cognizable in relation to extremism, the oppression of women, and his narrow conception of terrorism that exempts the state-sponsored forms exhibited by Israel, for example.
He is dismissive to Palestinian or Muslim guests, disrupting them with stammering interruptions at every turn. The only guest not interrupted and given free range to articulate the complexities in Gaza was Norman Finkelstein – who provided a stirring accounting of the horrors of life in the Strip.
Finkelstein, however, is a white man. Just like the host he sat across from. Racial affinity, instead of political views, is likely the variable that determines Morgan’s respect level to his guests on air. As displayed by the deference he gave to Mark Regev, Ben Shapiro, and the very architect of the genocide in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Arab and Muslim guests were not extended that deference or respect. They are shouted down and interrupted, introduced as “extremists” or “controversial,” and always in Morgan’s line of fire while sitting defenselessly on air.
They are only there as showpieces. Lured into a stable that parades itself as “balanced on Gaza” but races onward as a Trojan Horse of exploitative Islamophobia feeding off global attention on a live genocide.
He is a vulture. A culture vulture of a different, diabolical breed.
This makes Piers Morgan an Islamophobe of the worst order. And an uncensored one, at that.
Khaled A. Beydoun is a law professor and author. He publishes his insights daily at @khalebeydoun.
Well said! I hope Piers gets to read how we feel!
Beautifully said 👌🏼