Campus Watch   Setting the Record Straight

Making Islamophobia Mainstream: How Muslim-bashers broadcast their bigotry

December 1, 2008

Response to:

Making Islamophobia Mainstream: How Muslim-bashers broadcast their bigotry
by Steve Rendall and Isabel Macdonald
FAIR: Fairness in Accuracy and Reporting
December 1, 2008
Categories:
Falsely alleged connection to David Horowitz
Misc. Corrections

Campus Watch Responds:

Given the name of the organization for which they write (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), one might hope for evidence that its authors make some effort to live up to the name. Yet Rendall and Macdonald fallaciously claim that Campus Watch is “anti-Muslim.” This tired claim can never be substantiated because it’s clearly false. Here’s the text:

This range of anti-Muslim views finds its vehicles in a variety of online, radio and print outlets. Some of the harshest Muslim-bashing can be found in the right-wing blogosphere (Little Green Footballs, Front Page, WorldNetDaily, Gates of Vienna, Michelle Malkin.com, Daniel Pipes.org) and on the websites which link to these blogs and generate their own anti-Muslim content (Middle East Forum, Campus Watch....

Campus Watch critiques Middle East studies without regard to the religion of the professors with whom we disagree. Even a cursory glance at our work shows that we aim our critiques at Christians, Jews, Muslims, and anyone else who politicizes the field.

But Rendall and Macdonald’s errors don’t stop there, as only a few paragraphs later they assert that CW is run through the David Horowitz Freedom Center:

Pipes’ Campus Watch and Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch operate out of David Horowitz’s Freedom Center.

This is an urban legend peddled by writers who don’t take the time to fact check their own work. As we’ve noted in this space time and again, Campus Watch is a project of the Middle East Forum, a nonprofit think tank in Philadelphia. We have no relation whatsoever to the Horowitz Freedom Center.

(Posted by Winfield Myers)