Plots, Politics and the Weight of Page 1

Last Sunday, the new Public Editor at the New York Times tried to defend the Times' coverage of the story about the Muslims (from the Caribbean, yet), who were arrested for plotting to blow up a fuel line at JFK Airport. He was trying to answer complaints that the paper downplayed the story in order to deny credit to the Bush Administration "war on terror".

The issue of coverage on this story was not only about the Times' unwillingness to credit the Bush Administration with any positive coverage on the "war on terror". In fact the New York Times is unwilling to give prominent coverage to any story that might impugn the actions of Muslims (ANY Muslims), especially domestically.

If anyone were to dispassionately review the Times' coverage of domestic terror-related stories in the US, they would find that it is almost always buried deep in the National or Metro sections. It must pain the writers at the Times to even mention that the suspect or perpetrator is a Muslim. The masquerade is especially hard to keep up, one would imagine, since Muslims have such distinctly MUSLIM names! Whether it is conviction of the guys who conspired to blow up the subways in New York; various imams and "scholars" involved in buying weapons for the Jihadists; the killings in Seattle or the attack at the El Al terminal in LA (whatever happened in these cases, anyway?), the Times is reluctant to give the stories anything above the minimum requirement to cover "all the news that is fit to print (minimally)". It must pain their editors to cover any story that contradicts the Times mantras: "diversity" and "tolerance".

The Times very prominently displays when a Muslim is found not guilty or (more usually) some soft-headed judge over-rules the Government and releases a Muslim suspect. The Times is also happy to play up, on its front pages, the touchy feely stories about "good" and "wise" Muslim imams giving advice to young Muslims about "dating" or other American customs. Of course the Imam in Brooklyn (later in New Jersey) also said it is his duty to convert America to Islam, but that was buried in the last paragraph.