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Thursday, August 2, 2007

"All the News That's Fit Not to Print"


On March 3, 2006, Mohammed Reza Taheriaz, an Iranian immigrant and recent graduate of the University of North Carolina, drove an suv across the lawn of the Chapel Hill campus, striking down several students in the process. (No one was killed.) Upon arrest, he stated that he was attempting to gain revenge for the traetment of Muslims world wide.

On July 28, 2006, Noveed Haq, a Pakistani Muslim, walked into the Jewish Federation Center in Seattle and opened fire, leaving one person dead and 5 wounded. Haq proclaimed after the deed that he was a Muslim who was angry at Jews.

On August 29, 2006, Ohmeed Aziz Popal went on a driving rampage through the streets of San Francisco, intentionally running down pedestrians. By the time he was captured, one person was dead. One of the sites where Popal struck his victims was the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.

On February 12, 2007, a Bosnian Muslim immigrant, Sulejman Talovic, went on a shooting rampage in a Salt Lake City mall. By the time police killed the suspect, 5 people were dead and 4 others wounded.

Unavoidably, all of these events gained widespread news coverage on the day they happened. Yet, all of them pretty much disappeared from the news media within 24 hours, except for the local communities involved. The question is- why did national news coverage end the day after they happened?

If you assume the best of motives for the news media, you might say that they want to avoid a national backlash against America's Muslim community. That would be understandable since I would not want to tar all Muslims in America with the acts of these individuals. However, on the other hand, doesn't the public have the right to know if there is a gathering threat of random violence being committed by disaffected Muslims in our country, such as the situation in the UK? Should not the public know when there is a rising threat? Moveover, in the San Francisco and Seattle incidents, there are strong indications of terroristic acts being directed toward Jews-hate crimes, if you will-always a favorite story-line of the media (depending on who are the victims and who are the perpetrators).

So why have these stories been buried by the media, apparently hoping they will progress toward judicial disposition under the cover of darkness? It seems to me that our mainstream media, which has no taste for our War on Islamic Terror, has no desire to publicize news events that would tend to justify our efforts to combat this scourge. In other words, these stories just don't fit into their agenda.

This points out a fundamental problem with our mainstream media. They tend to pick and choose which stories have legs and which don't based on their liberal philosophy. For example, how do you think they would publicize a story in which a white, Christian American went on a rampage and attacked a mosque, killing several people in the process, all in the name of Jesus? Answer-we would be reading about it every day.

At least our government tries to alert us to when the threat of terror has risen, a la color codes yellow, orange, red. Not so our news media. Isn't it strange that a media that traditionally has given superhuman effort to ferret out news scoops, now seeks to suppress news that doesn't fit into their agenda?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thought your post was very interesting and oh so true. Along the same lines, I wonder why the press does not pick up on themes of hatred like those constantly espoused by Abdul Malik Ali and others right on your doorstep. Id love to chat more about this stuff - feel free to email me at br.asad@gmail.com if you get a chance. Thanks, and I look forward to reading more...

Gary Fouse said...

Response to Br.Asad,

Thanks for the comment. It all depends on who is the target of hatred and who is the recipient. One would think that it is all equally detestable, but in certain quarters, some hate is more acceptable than others.