Excerpt:
In a Washington Post piece entitled, "In the news media, are Muslims the only 'terrorists'?" Paul Farhi complains that killers Jerad and Amanda Miller and other right-wing extremists have not been labeled terrorists, and claims that the media only applies the "terrorist" label to Muslims who commit acts of violence.
There is no reason why the Millers' attacks shouldn't be labeled terrorism. But Farhi's piece actually suffers from the same distortion and one-sidedness that he claims to see in media coverage. The key flaw in Farhi's piece is a quote he uses from Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR): "Without a doubt, if these individuals had been Muslim, it not only would be called 'terrorism' but it would have made national and international headlines for weeks. It was an act of terror, but when it's not associated with Muslims it's just a day story that comes and goes."
Hooper's own group, CAIR, has been labeled a "front for Hamas" by the FBI. The Justice Department named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, when what was once the nation's largest Muslim charity was discovered to have been funneling money to Hamas. Several former CAIR officials have been imprisoned for terror-related crimes. Its California chapter distributed a poster telling Muslims not to talk to the FBI. Nonetheless, although reporters routinely quote CAIR spokesmen in stories regarding Islam and Muslims, no one in the mainstream media ever mentions CAIR's ties to Hamas or these other questionable aspects of its record. Instead, they deceptively call CAIR a "civil rights" organization. Farhi himself identifies it only as a "Washington-based group."