Kerry Tells Media: Don’t Cover Terror

Secretary of State John Kerry offered the media a solution Monday to combat the threat of radical Islamic terrorism: just don’t report what’s going on in the world.

Speaking at a press conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Kerry first suggested the U.S. government could not protect citizens from the inevitability of an attack.

“Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”

“No country is immune from terrorism,” Kerry said. “It’s easy to terrorize. Government and law enforcement have to be correct 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But if you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people. You can make some noise.”

Then Kerry suggested that public awareness of the threat posed by radical Islamic terror was somehow a contributing factor to the rising tide of Islamist violence.

“Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much,” Kerry said. “People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”

How Kerry believed blissful ignorance would reduce the threat posed by radical Islam wasn’t clear. But the secretary of state did suggest being unemployed could be a driver behind radicalization.

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“They attack culture. They attack history, and that is why I describe the fight against violent extremism as one of the world’s most important challenges,” Kerry said. “It’s not just the battlefield; it’s the minds … And if we have too many young people who can’t go to school, or too many young people who are frustrated, or they can’t find a job — if we leave those minds out there for extremists to recruit, then it will continue, and none of us would be doing our jobs if we allowed that to happen.”

But what about the minds of the people across the globe who deserve to know what is happening around them so that they can make informed personal decisions to keep their families safe — or to vote for their political leaders?

“If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed,” founding father Thomas Jefferson once wrote. “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”

Kerry, apparently, disagrees.