aybe it’s just the population of bigots I’m most familiar with, but it seems weird to me that bigotry tends to be the defining characteristic of a person.
For example take, oh I don’t know, WorldNetDaily’s Joseph Farah.
Farah’s just a little brought down because the media haven’t been as quick to label Mohammod Youssef Abdulazeez, the man suspected of carrying out the tragic shooting deaths of five people at military facilities in Tennessee, a terrorist as he would like.
After all, “I guessed (his name would be Muhammad) when I first heard of the shooting.“
Assuming that Joseph Farah ever understood how journalism works, he’s conveniently forgotten in order to show off just how bigoted he is.
Here’s the thing, journalism takes time and patience. Actual work goes into digging up true, verified and contextually important details. It’s a bit like digging up the bones of a dinosaur no one’s ever seen before. It’s hard work made harder by the fact that no one knows what the final picture is supposed to look like. But journalists, real, honest journalists, put in the effort and dredge up the truth.
Yes, mistakes are made. All too often mistakes are made. What is reported as legitimate often turns out to be flat-out wrong. What is reported as important frequently turns out to be tangential. One of the nice things about journalism is that when those mistakes are made, honest journalists and news sites are able in the next news cycle to publish retractions and move on to reporting, in greater clarity, just what happened.
Importantly, real journalists work hard to not just luxuriate in, and report based on, their own half-assed biases.
Which is why I have a hard time taking Farah’s journalism credentials seriously when he writes junk like:
At first, the self-conscious, politically correct and oh-so-culturally-sensitive establishment press didn’t want to hear the name of the murderer of four U.S. Marines at a Chattanooga recruiting center.
When his name was inevitably released, some in the media and government suggested it sounded like an “Arabic name,” but not necessarily Muslim.
They wondered at loud about possible motives. Hmmmm … what could it have been?
Then we heard he was just your average Joe, from a nice family – no one who knew him ever suspected anything was amiss. He was a great student. He was a good wrestler. He was a “smart individual.” He seemed like a good kid, we were told. He was quiet, didn’t have any problems in the neighborhood.
What could have been the motives?
Then we learned that he wrote in his senior yearbook: “My name causes national security alerts. What does yours do?”
Then we learned his father, Youssef, had been investigated by the FBI and placed on a terrorism watch list, but was later dropped.
Yep. Journalists reported on facts as they became available or were discovered. Shame on them.
And, of course, as prosaic (in spirit is not execution) as my defense of journalists was, there is always a more pragmatic reason behind why journalists work the way they do.
Boy oh boy do you not want to label someone a criminal unless they’ve actually been convicted as such. The press has a responsibility (and legal obligation) to not smear, slander and libel people. Part and parcel with that is not just announcing theoretical motivations as though they’re gospel truth. Part and parcel with that is not just calling someone a terrorist because they were named for a god you don’t much care for.
I would trust that Farah knows that. By Unicraum’s bifurcated eye-teeth, he’s got a lawyer writing copy for him. I mean, it’s Larry Klayman, but still...
Hell, the two of them have even sued Esquire for defamation.
Joseph Farah knows how liability works. He probably, somewhere in his lizard-brain, even understands how journalism works.
He just cares more about hating Muslims.
Bigotry is more important to Joseph Farah than journalism. It’s more important than appearing competent. It’s more important that the world perceiving him as someone who knows not just how to do his job, but what his job actually is.
Joseph Farah is willing to act like the very nature of journalism itself, something he voluntarily claims to do every day, makes no sense to him because acting that way gives him an excuse bare his Islamaphobia-pocked soul to the world.
Strip everything irrelevant about Joseph Farah away and all you would have left, top to bottom, is hate.
Surely there are bigoted people out there for whom that trait isn’t at the forefront of who they are. I mean, there’s got to be someone out there for whom when people talk about them the conversation goes something like, “oh yeah, they’re a terrific gardener, just a real green thumb through and through. They don’t think much of Mexicans but, oh! You should hear them play the harpsichord. It sounds like angels tickling the ribs of a newborn kitten.”
But those types of bigots aren’t at WorldNetDaily.
