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Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Murderous Right-Wing Extremists Not 'Terrorists'?

Revealing piece by Paul Farhi at Wash Post on mainstream news outlets refusing to label the many and various murderous right-wing extremists (shooters and would-be bombers) "terrorists." The explanation from AP and Reuters, for example, is that their policy is to follow the lead of the FBI and other gov't sources--if they don't call them terrorists, neither will we!  So much for independent news judgement.  But note Farhi's piece itself.  He seems to have some sympathy for the view that the right-wing nut jobs fit the definition of "terrorist" --but his only quoted sources for this are both associated with Islamic-American groups.  Of course they see a double standard but a reader would likely shrug this off given their backgrounds.  Farhi finds no one else to criticize even though, for example, see my story at The Nation three days ago raising exactly this issue (it has been the most popular piece on their site all week).   And he closes his story with a Brookings expert who agrees with AP and Reuters.

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