[Update at end of post]
Three Muslim students have been found shot dead in their living quarters close to the University of North Carolina. As the BBC reported, “The bodies of Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha were discovered on Tuesday, all with gunshots to their heads. A 46-year-old man, Craig Stephen Hicks, is being held on first-degree murder charges”.
So another multiple fatal shooting in a country where thousands die every year from gunshot inflicted wounds, then. But the thought has entered that the media coverage being given to this particular killing is rather lower key than if the perpetrator had been a follower of The Prophet, and one news source infamous for its apparently loaded views on Muslims is already telling anyone that will listen that it was not a hate crime.
Yes, while the Beeb says “Police have said they are trying to determine if attack was hate-motivated. The fact that all three students were Muslims has led to speculation on social media over whether their faith played a role in the shooting”, and MSNBC said “ it is not yet known if the victims’ faith was a factor in the killings”, a third source asserted “Parking dispute, not bias, triggered triple murder, say NC police”.
To no surprise at all, that source was Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse), and Rupe’s Stateside troops lost no time telling “The murder of three North Carolina college students was motivated by an ongoing dispute over a parking space, despite widespread speculation the victims were targeted by an avowed atheist because of their Muslim faith, police said”, also noting “rampant suspicion that the crime was motivated by hate”.
Yes, talk of a hate crime is already been discounted by Fox, as it’s “rampant suspicion”. Nevertheless, as Mohamed Elmasry at al-Jazeera noted “The religious identity of violent perpetrators is only highlighted when they're Muslim”, and Piers Morgan observed “If a Muslim executed 3 Christian students in [the] US, it would get a LOT more media coverage than I’m seeing right now”, not everyone agrees with Fox News.
After all, on one well-known occasion that a Muslim was the perpetrator - the Fort Hood shootings - Fox carried (and still has available) items titled “Muslim Outrage”, “Government Blind to Radical Islam?”, “Terrorism or Madness?”, “Terror Loophole?” and “9/11 Commission Leaders Warn of Homegrown Terror”. The channel wheeled out renowned rent-a-quote Sarah Palin to talk of the “Massive Warning Flags”.
As Mohamed Elmasry asks, “At one point do we begin to hold media organisations at least partly accountable for the anti-Muslim sentiment that is gripping many western nations?” He will know about Fox News and anti-Muslim sentiment: after all, he’s “an assistant professor in the Department of Communications at the University of North Alabama”. And yes, the question has to be put again, why less coverage when Muslims are victims?
That needs answering, not just in the USA, but across the Western world, and soon.
[UPDATE 1900 hours: Piers Morgan has continued to take a cynical
fire
of those who have tried to pass off this killing as some kind of parking dispute - like Fox News.
"
Nobody seriously believes this atheist maniac shot dead 3 Muslim students over a car parking argument, right?" he observed at hearing that news, then elaborating further.
"And let's not call him an 'atheist', actually. Let's call him what he is: a Muslim-murdering American terrorist" concluded the former Daily Mirror editor. This may get him even more Twitter hate than usual, but the idea that someone would execute three people over a parking dispute really is coming it.
Still, Fox News, and all that, eh?]
9 comments:
" And yes, the question has to be put again, why less coverage when Muslims are victims?".
Talking of 'biased media', Tim ... there are 5 times more hate crimes recorded by the FBI against American Jews than against American Muslims (whose numbers are roughly similar). And there are 8 times as many recorded against LGBT people ... (numbers of which are obviously unknown but estimated as less than either Jews or Muslims) > http://www.splcenter.org/home/2012/spring/fbi-bias-crimes-against-muslims-remain-at-high-levels
Are The Guardian, MSNBC, BBC etc etc reporting anything about that?
The Guardian, MSNBC and BBC are not trying to spin the story, so your suggestion is fatuous.
Well the BBC are being widely critised for their lack of coverage! Is that worse than Fox? I guess you missed that.
I think you're vaguely right about Fox in this case because of the lede, though you're spinning yourself to make out their actual report, as I'm reading right now, to be more than it actually is, or an exception to the rest of the MSM, and I'm sure they'll be some awful comment from Fox to come.
However it says everything about the inability of the left and liberals to self criticise that you ignore my obvious point about how the media actually plays up the scale of anti muslim hate crimes and plays down those against LGBT and Jews. That's *all* the media, including that hated Fox.
Remember the hashtag campaign and outrage at the media around this Tim? http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/13/killings-at-kansas-jewish-centers-were-hate-crimes-right.html
This post is still about what happened at Chapel Hill. Boring but true.
Last point Tim,
In gun loon America people get shot to death for texting in a cinema.
So shooting someone over aparking space is not 'coming it', whether Fox says it or Reuters does (yep, them too).
It wasn't just a spur of the moment thing, and three people got shot. They all received head shots. And, another minor point, I didn't say that the act of shooting was "coming it".
I would disagree that the media plays down hate crime against the Jewish community - there has (rightly) been a huge amount in the media of late about an alarming rise in anti-semitism.
Could it be that it's not that the media 'plays up' hate crimes against Muslims, could it be that there's a problem across the board in the under reporting of hate crimes against all three groups?
(and the media aren't responsible for hashtag campaigns so a lack of one in that case is nothing to do with the media)
You might like to read http://aattp.org/nc-man-publicly-executes-three-muslim-students/
Post a Comment