Another Example of Why Americans Don't Trust Journalists

Mark Tapscott pinged me with his editorial in the Examiner today which cites comments made by a Canadian police official as an example of how "the demands of political correctness too often make it impossible to speak honestly about reality". Tapscott makes it abundantly clear that the notion that the 17 suspects arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police represented "the broad strata of our society" is absurd on it face. In fact, almost all of them fit the exact profile of the 9/11 hijackers.

His editorial got me thinking about a Newseum panel at the National Press Club convened to discuss the First Amendment Center's 2005 report on the "State of the First Amendment". The panel was me plus Ken Paulson, editor of USA Today; Barbara Cochran, president, Radio-Television News Directors Association; Matt Stearns, Washington correspondent, The Kansas City Star; Lee Thornton, Eaton Professor of Journalism, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland; Gene Policinski, Executive Director, First Amendment Center) spent a good deal of time discussing the report’s finding that American citizen’s do not trust journalists. I argued that readers don’t trust journalists because they play a “wink wink” sort of "inside game" where they don't tell the readers what they know and don't demand that sources "own" their own words.

While I agree with Tapscott, I think a greater concern is the news media serving as stenographer for Mike McDonell of the RCMP who made the "broad strata" claim.

Wasn't their anyone in the room to ask just how 17 muslim jihadis who were plotting to blow up parliament and behead the Prime Minister would represent the "broad strata" of a society that is almost exclusively secular or Christian, almost exclusively of European descent and almost exclusively peaceful and law abiding? Doesn't McDonnell's definition - that they were "students or employed or unemployed" - describe every adult in Canada? Next time the Mounties are searching for a violent fugitive will they issue an ABP for a "suspect who may be a student or employed or unemployed"?

I first read about the arrests in The New York Times. I saw that “broad strata” quote and immediately thought “bull----”. I kept reading the NYT piece waiting to be told the obvious, that these terror suspects were Muslim extremists. It never came.

Instead the Times simply listed the names of the subjects:

Fahim Ahmad, 21; Zakaria Amara, 20; Asad Ansari, 21; Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30; Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43; Mohammed Dirie, 22; Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24; Jahmaal James, 23; Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19; Steven Vikash Chand, alias Abdul Shakur, 25; Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21; and Saad Khalid, 19.

This is the worst form of journalistic cowardice. Not only did the Times not challenge the Mounties' politically correct and utterly absurd statement but they compounded the inanity by skirting the "muslim extremist" issue entirely, instead resorting to the tired tactic of listing the names of the men and leaving it to the reader’s “prejudices” to make the inference for them.

If journalists want to know why the American people do not trust them they would do well to examine how the Times (and many other papers) reported this story, falling into lockstep with the PC Police in Canada and burying the obvious lede “17 Muslim terror suspects arrested in Canada”.

Apparently even the Times agreed because they have since rewritten their story. The “broad strata” line was dropped down to the 6th paragraph. The list of names was dropped down to the 25th paragraph so that is no longer on the first page of the article on the web. A new 5th paragraph was added although it fails to note these fellows were Muslims:

The 17 men were mainly of South Asian descent and most were in their teens or early 20's. One of the men was 30 years old and the oldest was 43 years old, police officials said. None of them had any known affiliation with Al Qaeda.

Dave Winer made an excellent point the other day when he said that journalist don't do anything special, that people tell other people "what they think happened" all the time. Does anyone believe that when Americans learned of the arrests in Ontario they were thinking of something other than 9/11? When you publish a newspaper in the United States, especially one based two miles from Ground Zero, you need to play it straight when it comes to Muslim extremists and terrorism. If you want to earn the trust of your readers stop worrying about who you might offend and start worrying about telling readers what you know.