Coverage of the attack on National Guard troops in Washington DC has been more than just a case study in journalistic failure. It has provided proof of the media’s deep fear of acknowledging the truth.
Yesterday, I told you about how reports parroted Trump’s baseless claims about an imaginary “20 million unknown and unvetted foreigners” in the country. Now, it’s time to address lies of omission.
The legacy media is failing in two basic duties: accuracy about foreign conflicts and consistency in describing attackers. It’s concrete proof of bigotry. Learn all about it in the new episode:
The unspoken word about Afghanistan
Sarah Beckstrom, 20, was killed in the attack. Andrew Wolfe, 24, is fighting for his life. The attacker had worked with the United States during the war in Afghanistan. When U.S. forces pulled out, he was among the many Afghans allowed into the United States.
Amid that chaotic 2021 withdrawal, all sorts of reports lamented a loss of progress. “A lot of people think these 20 years were not worth it, and we did just press erase for the last 20 years,” NBC’s former Afghanistan bureau chief said in an interview on MSNBC. Afghanistan, she said, was “mourning.” But was it? Surveys at the time showed Afghans overwhelmingly wanted the U.S. out.
What was ending exactly? Occupation. Actual occupation, unlike the factually not occupied so-called “occupied territories” the media has referred to for decades in their obsession with hating on Israel. (See where the Palestinian Authority said the “Israeli occupation” period ended in 1994.) As I explained in Episode 1, news agencies refused to acknowledge this about Afghanistan and Iraq.
By ignoring reality, news agencies maintain the propagandistic tactic of associating the word “occupation” with Israel in the subconscious minds of millions, or even billions, of people.
The hidden fact about the shooter
There have been numerous long stories about the shooter, whose motivation remains unknown. As I explain in this episode, I went through a bunch of pieces word for word. Many did not have a single mention of the fact that he is Muslim. (I note that more than 99% of Afghanistan is Muslim, since the country long ago killed, banished, or in other ways persecuted anyone who wouldn’t convert to Islam.) Finally, I found one piece with a quote from someone who attends the same mosque that he does. Yet even that story avoided the words “Muslim” or “Islam.”
Contrast that against something happening in the Middle East. Recently, there has been a great deal of coverage of a small number of people behaving terribly in an area long known as Judea and Samaria. It is, nonsensically, now referred to as “the West Bank” because Jordan occupied it for 20 years. Virtually every story identifies these bad actors as Jewish.
Why? People inside newsrooms have drunk poison Kool-Aid. They believe acknowledging an attacker being Muslim is “Islamophobic,” while calling out Jewish people for any bad behaviors is some form of standing up to “oppression.” It’s insane.
Of course this one shooter does not automatically reflect on the approximately 200,000 Afghans who have resettled here since 2021. Any report can state this without hiding part of his reality.
The rules should be clear. Use the term “occupation” accurately, and be consistent in referring to an attacker’s religion. But let’s not hold our collective breath for this to happen. Many mainstream outlets won’t even acknowledge when Islamist terrorist groups proudly claim responsibility for attacks.
More to come tomorrow, including the media’s role in rushing the 2021 process, which involved measles and overwhelmed U.S. military bases.
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JL
