Don’t shoot the messenger, says al Jazeera. “A senior journalist from groundbreaking Arab television channel al Jazeera has urged the White House not to try to stifle media coverage of comments by Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden.

“We should not shoot the messenger just because we hate the message,” said Hafiz al Mirazi, Jazeera’s Washington bureau chief.

The Bush administration appealed to newspapers on Thursday not to publish in their entirety statements issued by bin Laden and his top aides, asserting they may contain coded messages to followers to carry out fresh attacks on U.S. targets.’ Yahoo! The administration appears disingenuous about this; the concern about coded messages is probably largely a pretext for not wanting bin Laden’s inflammatory message spread. The major news outlets, to their credit, acknowledge this distinction but, to their shame, have acceded to the “patriotic” request unquestioningly. This is effrontery to the public’s right to know. Many commentators, certainly not just this Arab critic, have noted that of course the best way for the American people to evaluate propaganda claims is to hear them, and that goes for propaganda from both sides.