The New York Times has all but confirmed to The Electronic Intifada (EI) that the son of its Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was recently inducted into the Israeli army.

Tikun Olam has more:

Since the Times has no full correspondent in Gaza or the West Bank, Bronner is in effect the editor covering all those theaters. As such he MUST be able to report dispassionately from the Palestinian as well as Israeli perspective.

Many of my readers have followed my ongoing critique of Bronner’s reporting, which shows decided, though perhaps not fully conscious bias towards Israel’s narrative. Given this, the possibility that his son serves in the army that maintains the Occupation and is the locus of injustice raises glaring questions of conflict of interest.

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Time has an article titled, “Defying stereotypes, most domestic ‘jihadists’ are educated, well-off” prominently illustrated with a courtroom sketch of David Coleman Headley.

Headley, according to Time, fits the definition of an educated, well-off ‘jihadi’ because – as the reporter describes him – he is a “Chicago businessman.” Actually, according to his Wikipedia bio, he was an employee of his friend’s immigration agency, hardly a “businessman.” It doesn’t appear that he ever went to college, and he’s a convicted heroin smuggler.

According to media reports, he was able to front himself off as a successful businessman in India, with a personal trainer and smoozing at the gym with Bollywood types, but it’s a huge inaccuracy to imply this con-man loser was some kind of successful person who inexplicably turned on his life of accomplishment and became a ‘jihadi.’

There are also problems with saying Ramy Zamzam comes from the ‘educated, well-off’ class. Zamzam may have been a student at the dental college, but his family lived in a basement apartment (we of the ‘educated, well-off’ class tend to like natural sunlight). The building shown in the media looks like typical public housing project construction. The local imam said he was carrying the hopes of his family on his shoulders for a better life.

I understand why educated, socially and economically accomplished terrorists are so fascinating, and some certainly do exist, but misrepresenting these people as something other than what they are is just shoddy.

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Muslim voices are finally being heard by and from Hollywood, and it’s in Tinseltown’s best interest to listen.
Negative stereotypes of Muslim characters date to at least the black-and-white era, but by the 1990s and the end of the Cold War, one-dimensional Muslim terrorist characters were the generic “bad guy” in countless movies and television shows, including True Lies (‘94) and Executive Decision (‘96). Even the cartoon Aladdin (‘92) portrayed villains with Middle Eastern accents while the hero and heroine had standard American voices.

Such repeated portrayals have colored public perceptions of Muslims and Middle Easterners. The events of 9/11 crystallized and, for some, affirmed the stereotype. But nearly a decade later, Hollywood seems to be changing its tune toward Muslims and Arabs.

It’s about time.

Recently, especially on television shows, Muslim characters are being treated differently. On 24, federal agent Jack Bauer protects the U.S. against terrorist attacks, but those attacks aren’t all coming from stereotypical Muslim characters anymore.

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USA Today: “Pakistan police: Five Americans have al-Qaeda link.”

Reuters: “Americans held in Pakistan ‘wanted to join holy war.’”

There’s no new information here. Just more alarmist quotes and headlines.

I’m sure the evening news will be quite a spectacle tonight with spinning graphics, bombastic music, moving photos and file film of training militants to go along with the breathless glower.

I wonder which ‘experts on American Muslims’ will be on the shows….

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Weekly news magazines like Time and Newsweek, which each have a circulation of between 3 and 4 million, can’t ‘break’ news stories because they are weekly, so their coverage tends to be more like what is called ’second-day coverage’ where they are offering analysis, predictions, repercussions, the ‘bigger picture,’ etc. Both Time and Newsweek have become much more conservative in orientation through the 1980s and 1990s.

For eight years, Americans have waged a Global War on Terrorism even as they argued about what that meant. The massacre at Fort Hood was, depending on whom you believed, yet another horrific workplace shooting by a nutcase who suddenly snapped, or it was an intimate act of war, a plot that can’t be foiled because it is hatched inside a fanatic’s head and leaves no trail until it is left in blood. In their first response, officials betrayed an eagerness to assume it was the first; the more we learn, the more we have cause to fear it was the second, a new battlefield where our old weapons don’t work very well and our values make us vulnerable: freedom, privacy, tolerance and the stubborn American certainty that people born and raised here will not reject the gifts we share.

Even as the President weighs how to fight the wars he inherited, he and the entire U.S. security apparatus will have to figure out how you fight a war against an enemy you can’t recognize, much less understand. In that sense, the war on terrorism has left the battlefield and moved to the realm of the mind.

This an excerpt to the main story in what appears to be “package coverage” with a number of sidebars and smaller stories linked off of it.

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The New York Times headlined, “Mass. Man Arrested in Terrorism Case….The authorities said he had conspired to attack civilians at a shopping mall, American soldiers abroad and two members of the executive branch of the federal government.”

AP called Mehanna “an Incompetent Wannabe” and practically accused him of “plotting to shoot up a mall, kill US troops fighting overseas, and assassinate US officials” here at home;

Fox News highlighted the alleged plot, called Mehanna “Defiant in Court,” and said he was only foiled by being “unable to get into terror camps for training and failed to get access to automatic weapons;”

the Wall Street Journal headlined the “Plots to Shoot Up Mall, Kill Federal Officials” by a man “out on bail (from an earlier unsubstantiated charge and) awaiting trial;”

the Washington Post reported about the: “Massachusetts man arrested on terror charges” (for) conspiring to support terrorists by seeking training from Islamic extremist fighters overseas….”

Time magazine offered a “two-minute bio” about an “Alleged US Terrorist….plann(ing) to carry out a ‘violent jihad’ by killing US politicians, (and) attack(ing) US shopping malls;”

the Christian Science Monitor headlined how the “FBI traced Tarek Mehanna in his quest to become a jihadi” and practically accused him of “try(ing) to become a terrorist for eight years following the 9/11 attacks….”

The editorialist, Stephen Lendman, writes, “Whenever Muslims are charged, the dominant media provides support without ever questioning the legitimacy of accusations. As a result, innocent victims are vilified. They’re presumed guilty unless proved innocent. Fear is instilled in the public, while law enforcement officials are portrayed as public defenders, working to keep us safe from bad guys.”

Buzz and I have been discussing media coverage of the Mehanna case here.

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The finale aired last month and the producers decided to go out in a blaze of real sleaze, with an episode called, “Strip Clubs. Open on Thursday.”

The sun sets on this series with this scene:

While the credits roll, an official talks about a CBP [Customs and Border Protection] German Shepherd named Rambo. His two-legged partner jokingly notes that, if Rambo could drive, he’d be out of a job. End of series.

Oh vomit…

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NBC has replaced this woman’s comment about Muslims with a less inflammatory comment: “I’m scared to death for my country. I believe Obama is running this country into the ground.”

This appears to be the only edit made to this online video. Footage of her previous comment does not appear to be posted. The original video was broadcast Saturday evening, Sept. 12, 2009, on NBC Nightly News.

A protester at Saturday’s Tea Party on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. made clear that she was afraid, saying “We are losing our country, we think the Muslims are moving in and taking over.”

NBC Nightly News interviewed the woman, who was surrounded by fellow protesters as she made the remarks. Her name was not used.

Just another example of how the tea bagger movement and its protests are not ‘teh awesome’ its supporters say it is. Max Blumenthal also visited the US Capitol protest this weekend with a video camera. Highlight: At about 4:20, Max Blumenthal says ‘Salaam Aleikum’ to one of the protesters who goes on to explain that not only does it mean ‘hello’ and ‘peace be with you,’ but that it also has something to do with beheading, boy rape, and killing young girls for getting an education.

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New York Times:

The NYTs had probably the most slanted story of the bunch I looked at. “Federal prosecutors on Tuesday bolstered their case against Daniel P. Boyd…” as though the defense was silent throughout the day. It accused him of “advocating violent jihad against the West,” something that no other newspaper reported, which leads me to believe they made it up.

Times reporter Victoria Cherrie also put together this construct:

Prosecutors identified Mr. Boyd as the man on the tape making remarks like, “We should take them out right now, they are over there killing our brothers,” apparently in reference to the American military…

Notice how the damming reference to the American military was added by the reporter. So easy to prove someone guilty when you complete their sentences for them.

In a 12 paragraph story only three were given over to the defense, and one of those gave the impression that Boyd is guilty by describing the defense of the others as trying to distance themselves from Boyd. Also notice the description of Boyd here that makes him seem like a powerful, threatening presence, juxtaposed in such a way with Sabrina Boyd’s “softness” that serves to invalidate her comment by implying male dominance:

Mr. Boyd’s wife, Sabrina, has said that he and his two sons were innocent of any violent intentions. On Tuesday she spoke softly through a tan burqa to her husband, whose large frame towered over the group of shackled suspects in orange jumpsuits.

Fox News

Fox News reports that Boyd is accused of plotting to wage “‘violent jihad’ against Americans,” a report that appeared in no other media outlet. This assertion is made in the first sentence of the article, and nowhere else in the story does Fox even bother to find a source to validate this assertion. Instead, the article goes on to say something else completely:

The men were arrested and charged last week with plotting to murder, kidnap, maim and injure persons in a foreign country.

BBC News

The BBC lied by omission. The information it published was a straight-forward, unembellished presentation of the prosecution’s case. Normally, a reporter will try to get the ‘other side of the story,’ which in this case would have been Sabrina Boyd denying the charges and claiming her family’s innocence. Nothing like that here.

Associated Press

The AP story was probably the most balanced story, but it also engaged in misleading sensationalism, with references in the first paragraph to Boyd’s guns and ammunition, even though they were legally owned, and Boyd is not accused of planning domestic violence against his fellow Americans – and would have likely been unable to tale his guns to foreign countries where the FBI claims he was planning action.

References to Muslim community support gave a little more substantial balance to this story:

During the detention hearing for Daniel Patrick Boyd and six other men accused of plotting terrorism abroad, the courtroom was packed with supporters, with some derisively laughing when federal agents said they didn’t know certain Arabic translations or details about the men. The shackled suspects nodded, smiled and tried to wave at family and friends while greeting the audience in Arabic with the common phrase “May peace be upon you.”

“May peace be upon you, also,” many in the audience responded.

There was also this:

Family members and close friends also didn’t want to talk, but some supporters said they believed the men were innocent or being unfairly targeted.

“Maybe there’s some bad Muslims in there, but just because you have a head scarf and faith in your heart doesn’t mean we’re aliens,” said 37-year-old Shagufta Syad, one of Boyd’s supporters. “I just want justice to be served. I’m here concerned as a Muslim, as an American, I need to know what’s going on.”

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This is not the first time Mr. Dobbs has pushed racist conspiracy theories or defamatory falsehoods about immigrants. We wrote you in 2007 to bring to your attention his utterly false claim that 7,000 new cases of leprosy had appeared in the United States in a recent three-year period, due at least in part to immigrants. (The real number, according to official statistics, was about 400. Mr. Dobbs took his spurious information from the late right-wing extremist, Madeleine Cosman.) In addition, Mr. Dobbs has reported as fact the so-called Aztlan conspiracy, which claims that undocumented Mexican immigrants are part of a plot to “reconquer” the American Southwest. He has suggested there is something to a related conspiracy theory that claims the governments of Mexico, the United States and Canada are secretly planning to merge into the “North American Union.” He has falsely claimed that “illegal aliens” fill one third of American prison and jail cells. And Mr. Dobbs has routinely disparaged, on CNN’s air, those who have had the integrity to point out the falsity of these and similar claims.

Respectable news organizations should not employ reporters willing to peddle racist conspiracy theories and false propaganda. It’s time for CNN to remove Mr. Dobbs from the airwaves.

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