Every Islamic terror attack is like a grenade. The blast brutally kills and cripples its victims. Most nearby dive for cover.
That’s what the American media have been doing for decades. Every time another Muslim terrorist ;beheads, ;butchers ;or ;bombs, journalists do their best to hide from the ;reality. Or quickly cover up the result as if they believe the rest of us will soon forget.
Recent terror ;attacks ;in the United States, Canada, Australia and ;Israel ;(journalists love to skip them) haven’t stopped the short-term memory wipe. On Monday evening and Tuesday morning, ABC, CBS and NBC left out the Islamic connection from the trial of alleged Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
ABC Chief Investigative Reporter Brian Ross ;speculated ;that, “the jury will also see this ;bullet-pocked anti-American ;message.” Islam? Nope.
Terrorists attacked the magazine Charlie Hebdo 24 hours later. The lions of the free press who are now supportive of the magazine. But they are the same ones who gave credence to Obama’s claims that an obscure YouTube video was the cause for a terror attack that killed a U.S. ambassador. Not the Islamic monsters who did the attack.
Remember the media reaction to the riots over Danish cartoons depicting Mohammad in 2005. ;Two hundred people ;died in global riots. Even now, the newspaper that published the cartoons must boost ;security.
But it wasn’t just whether to run the images. It was the rationale. The New York Times didn’t publish the cartoons, calling them “no less hurtful to most Muslims than Nazi caricatures of Jews or Ku Klux Klan caricatures of blacks are to those victims of intolerance.” “That is why the Danish cartoons will not be reproduced on these pages,” it wrote.
In the wake of the latest attack the Times used ;Twitter ;to blame the victims saying “#CharlieHebdo has long tested limits with its satire.” Financial Times associate editor ;Tony Barber, ;soon after the attack, blamed the magazine for having “a long record of mocking, baiting and needling French Muslims.” I didn’t know “needling” warranted the death penalty.
USA Today ;responded with the dangerous rantings of Anjem Choudary, “a radical Muslim cleric,” who also criticized the cartoonists. “Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone,” he admitted. Free people aren’t surprised. ; He added, “Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression.”
That anti-freedom argument is what news outlets are surrendering to.
But they are hardly the only cowardly media involved. Hollywood has been running scared from radical Islam for years – far worse than how it handled North Korea.
When Tom Clancy’s “Sum of All Fears” hit the big screen, the terrorists who nuke an American city were no longer dangerous Islamists as they were in the book. Evil Russians were “far more acceptable both to Hollywood sensibilities and the Arab ethnic lobby,” reported ;Slate. Hollywood bowed to the Muslim pressure group the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
ABC Family killed “controversial” “Alice in Arabia” rather than offend ;Muslims. The TV show “South Park” depicted Mohammed in a bear suit in one episode, to avoid showing an actual image. The writers still received death threats. Comedy Central killed the next episode before Islamists did the same to its staff. Two Muslim converts were ;convicted ;in the case.
A Facebook protest of the “South Park” fiasco called “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” resulted in more threats. Artist Molly Norris ended up “moving, changing her name and essentially wiping away her identity,” according to ;The Seattle Weekly.
Even a Yale University Press book about the Danish cartoon controversy wouldn’t include the images that were the subject matter of the book “because the University and the Press are concerned about a possible resurgence of violence,” wrote The ;Yale Daily News. Then why do the book at all?
Journalists labeled those criticizing Islam “phobes,” rather than blame Muslims. Time ;ran a cover story asking “Is America Islamophobic?” with the preconceived answer that “hate speech against Muslims and Islam is growing both more widespread and more heated.”
It’s all part of how media and the left redefine reality. “Terrorists” become “militants” and “terrorism” becomes ;“workplace violence.” ;All to hide reality.
Until more people are slaughtered. Journalists can’t hide that many bodies.
Dan Gainor is the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture. He writes frequently about media for Fox News Opinion. He can also be contacted on Facebook and Twitter as dangainor.