Picture this: A group supported by the far right slaughters more than 160 people. A right-wing “news” site hides basic information about who did it. Instead, the site runs cover for that group and its murderous ideology.
People who have lifelong positive associations with certain mainstream news organizations can find this very difficult to believe, but it’s true: Legacy news giants do this on the left. They’re not what they used to be.
Listen to the latest episode for details.
It involves the latest massacre in Nigeria. Even the usually disastrous Associated Press didn’t run away from describing the perpetrators: “gunmen believed to be Islamic extremists.” (While “believed to be” is accurate in the immediate wake of the attack, Islamist terrorists have been slaughtering people across Africa, especially targeting Christians.)
Meanwhile, over at The New York Times, the paper works especially hard to hide the existence of Islamist terrorism — even though attacks have been on the rise.
So the Times used its story on these killings to further its agenda.
The word “Islamist” does not appear. “Islamic” appears only in reference to U.S. military action targeting the Islamic State “following a campaign by American conservatives, celebrities and Republican lawmakers.”
This sentence sums up the piece: “Most analysts say that the insecurity and chronic impunity puts both Christian and Muslim lives in danger.” The “insecurity” and “impunity” are the problem — not the multiple Islamist terrorist groups killing Christians and Muslims.
As ACN International notes, reports indicate the victims in this case “were overwhelmingly Muslim, killed by jihadist militants because they had refused to embrace their extremist version of Islam.” But in the Times’ piece, Muslims are only victims — not perpetrators. (Reminder: I try not to link to failed Big Media because they don’t deserve your traffic! But if you’d like to see this, here you go.)
In a buried line, the Times says, “Some analysts and residents said the gunmen were likely members of a faction of Boko Haram, the terrorist group that has destabilized Nigeria’s northeast.” It leaves out what Boko Haram is: “a Nigeria-based group that seeks to overthrow the current Nigerian Government and replace it with a regime based on Islamic law,” according to the National Counterterrorism Center.
The Times also squeezes the word “jihadist” into a sentence having nothing to do with killing. “In recent years, bandits and jihadist groups have moved into a national park in the state, levying taxes on farming and fishing communities and kidnapping people.”
It’s the same phenomenon I discussed after attacks in India and Pakistan. CNN produced a 1,000-word analysis without telling you that Islamist terrorist groups claimed responsibility.
Whether it’s covering Bad Bunny’s halftime show or the world’s most serious issues, legacy media engages in the same three-step practice designed to block out reality.
The Week-Long Bad Bunny Half-Truth Show
Sometimes, cultural moments reflect the media’s penchant for tuning out what it doesn’t want you to see.
Big Media’s motto: If it doesn’t match what we want you to believe, we ignore its existence.
JL