An elite media school is training reporters to downplay Islamic violence, arguing more people die from AIDS. Yeah, nothing to see there at Ground Zero. Move along.
‘Jihad is not a leading cause of death in the world,” the Poynter Institute cautions journalists in its online course, “Covering Islam in America.” So journos should cover it “in a way that does not amplify fears.”
Better to cover malaria and traffic accidents, it says; they’ve killed far more people than the school’s estimate of 165,000 victims of jihad over the past few decades. It notes the biggest Islamic terror toll in the U.S. was the nearly 3,000 killed on 9/11.
“To give those numbers some context, the FBI reports that approximately 15,000 people in the U.S. are murdered each year,” Poynter’s 30-page media guide says.
Must we spell it out for Poynter profs? Jihadi murder isn’t run-of-the-mill murder. It’s mass murder done in the name of religion. That makes it uniquely horrifying — and far more newsworthy. It also targets governments and destroys properties — even whole economies.
In another blunder, the course redefines jihad as “struggle” against sin rather than the holy war it’s overwhelmingly practiced as.
“We created ‘Covering Islam in America’ as a tool for journalists who want to be accurate in educating their audience about the religion and culture of Islam,” Poynter says on its website. Yet it’s Poynter that’s misleading the public — and doing so, we might add, in a time of war.
According to scholars, jihad is the “sixth pillar” of Islam:
• Fact: More than 110 verses of the Quran are devoted to violent jihad, as well as three-quarters of the seerah, or sacred biography, of Muhammad, considered by Islam to be the ideal Muslim role model.
• Fact: The seerah documents 19 major jihadi battles against non-Islamic communities personally led by the warrior prophet, and an additional 15 that he ordered — all within a span of 10 years.
• Fact: The Quran actually prescribes jihadi warfare on all “able-bodied” Muslims; those unable to fight are commanded to financially support those who do.
Poynter’s source? The Council on American-Islamic Relations — such an authority on peace and tolerance that the FBI has shunned it from participation in outreach activities due to damning evidence implicating the “mainstream” group in the largest terror-finance case in U.S. history.
The Justice Department in 2008 named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the criminal Holy Land Foundation’s scheme to funnel millions to Hamas terrorists.
Red-blooded journalists (unindoctrinated by Poynter) accurately reported this as yet another example of jihad in America.
“Covering Islam in America” is a cowardly course in political correctness for reporters assigned to cover the worst domestic threat in our history. You can see why the Fourth Estate is in a state of shambles.