Burying The Lede?

Roger Simon is quoted saying:

Think for a moment how the Times would have constructed an article (has constructed many articles) about the malfeasance of US servicemen.

But “US servicemen” and “Islamic extremist” are not in the same category. “US servicemen” is a fact and “Islamic extremist” is an opinion; it could be quite obvious, but it’s still an opinion and you may not want to put an opinion in the news article. I am assuming here that those fellas didn’t carry membership ID cards with “Islamic extremist” printed on them.

Oh and I found a good article that discusses this, and why (as usual) one should always question anything said by the greatest legal mind of our era.

‘Is Canada now facing its own, home-grown violence?

The 17 arrested men are all apparently Muslim, with one possible exception. The RCMP alleges the suspects planned to use three tons of fertilizer (ammonium nitrate) to build deadly truck bombs for use against targets in southern Ontario.

This scenario is plausible. Radical Muslims around the world see western intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan as crimes against the Islamic world, part of a new anti-Muslim crusade directed from Washington. A small number of extremists may have decided to punish Canada for sending troops to fight in Afghanistan.

If the RCMP and CSIS have in fact uncovered a major terrorist plot, kudos to them for a job well done.

But caution is advised until all the facts are known.

Before we rush to judgment, it’s worth remembering the 19 foreign students, mostly from Pakistan, arrested in 2003 in and around Toronto, allegedly for plotting to blow up the nuclear reactors at Pickering or the CN Tower.

After a huge media uproar and lurid claims the charges were dropped and the accused deported for visa irregularities.

The Bush administration wants Canada to get tough on a wide assortment of Muslim groups and individuals protesting U.S. policy in the Muslim world.

These raids by hundreds of Canadian security officers and police against a relatively small number of mostly young Muslim suspects in Mississauga, Toronto and Kingston suggest this high-profile operation may have been designed as much for public relations and diplomatic reasons as national security. No doubt, Washington will be very pleased with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

But not everyone accused is always guilty.

FBI and Canadian authorities believe they have uncovered an important terrorist cell plotting major attacks in Canada and the U.S. But the FBI’s track record to date has not been impressive. Recall that of the more than 2,000 Muslims arrested in the US since 2001 for suspicion of terrorism, less than 15 were convicted, and those mostly for minor visa offenses.’

http://winnipegsun.com/News/Canada/2006/06/04/1613547-sun.html

Now, political correctness is not a good thing. If these people are Islamic terrorists, they should be designated as such, and if they were planning terrorist atrocities they should face the force of the law. But some scepticism would be wise at this point.

Apparently they were all LARPing and washing up in a Tim Hortons afterwards. This leaves the connection to Islamic extremism unclear, but at least gives them a shared activity in common.

Happy birthday, Belle!

I think the complaint has some merit. The NYT should adapt to the intellectual level of their readership and mention all the relevant facts in easy words in the first paragraph. Now the information about where they were coming from, about their religion and their mosque etc. is hidden in all those long winding paragraphs at the end. And no one would read that, would they?

And anti Muslim sentiment? If Americans wouldn’t love Muslims they wouldn’t be liberating Iraq would they?

But then maybe they are afraid of the decents with their famous manifesto. They are quite scary when they are threatening “those left-liberal voices today quick to offer an apologetic explanation for such political forces.”

So I’d be careful too. You might think saying they are motivated by “islamism” is a proper explanation, but then they might consider it apologetic. After all, they all have their own personal responsibility, and their excuses that they do it because of their religion is surely apologetic.

And with all those attempted attacks these days, maybe the NYT is wise not to risk angering them.

And finally, maybe those silly Canadians didn’t mention it?

Read for example this Canadian version.

They are worried about a backlash and about their Muslim community. So they wouldn’t have mentioned it they way you’d like. And so the NYT didn’t reported it the way you’d like. They do tend not to put their own interpretation in the first paragraph. Of course those Canadians splash their opinion all over their front page, but that’s another issue. (And even while scaremongering, still no mention of religion!)

Seems the NYT is on the horns of a dilemna. If they describe a Christian as an extremist, it proves they’re liberal. And if they fail to describe a Muslim as an extremist, it proves they’re liberal.

In this case, we should go with a means-tested allocation of allegations. Rightwingers need the excuse of a ‘liberal media’, while leftwingers can just wait for the facts to prove the NYT wrong. Or right, as the case may be.

So, ‘liberal media’ it is, every paragraph craftily constructed to conceal the awful truth. Scandalous.

“The thing that makes me skeptical though is the large number of people arrested. The whole history of conspiracy shows that the more people you have who are in on the conspiracy, the harder it is to keep it secret.”

Well it should be pointed out again that they were caught. :)

Oh look, it’s Steve, carrying water for Fox News, the network that backed the candidate who demonstrably did not take the threat of Islamic terrorism seriously (George Bush) in favor of the candidate who demonstrably did (Al Gore). Yes, Steve, you have a lot to teach us about wisdom.

Seems to me, this kind of lede is buried all the time – especially here south of the Canadian border…

Or perhaps that is just a courtesy extended only to domestic white supremists.

Oooops…

Stealing a title from Yglesias, How to argue like a conservative:

Perhaps one little zinger of information: Fox is conservative with an audience of 1.5 million. NBC/CBS/ABC/WashPost/NYTimes are a collection of liberals with an audience of, say 30-40 million.

Step 1: a) make things up, b) assert them as facts, c) don’t consider offering any support for your assertion(s).

Nope, no bias here (but, but, but, media can’t be liberal: O’Reilly is conservative!)

Step 2: Draw conclusions that a) don’t follow from your made up facts and b) don’t have anything to do with what you purport to be responding to.

Hmm, based on Belle’s two responses, it appears I was successful.

Step 3: Announce that your goal was not in fact to do something like “win an argument,” but rather “to provoke a response” or “get under their skin.” This way, your shocking inability to make sense can played off as an asset.

Step 4: Repeat.

Incidentally the Churchill quote is a crock. The original was, it seems a mixture of ‘If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then.’ (of Clemenceau’s son) and ‘ Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.’ (which nowadays, given the modern meaning of ‘Republican’ is a statement i am fully in agreement with. At least the second clause).

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5952/unquote.htmlA

And yeah I had to check that up, but let’s face it, in the form above it simply doesn’t sound like Churchill on the grounds that is

a: not funny and

b: bollocks.

That ‘Steve’ is found to be talking complete crap in a story about the press ‘getting it right’ tells its own story.

I want to clarify that comment 28, while entitled “how to argue like a conservative” is not actually addressed to any conservative who does not meet the two following qualifications: 1)comments under the name steve and 2) made a non-standard use of the word “zinger” in this thread.

You know, it’s very rare that I find myself agreeing with some Instapundit post about terrorism

This is internet-speak which can be loosely translated as, “I am about to say something which is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very stupid”.

A pair of Nazi’s is not like a pair of Levi’s. Puleeze. Are?

Quite apart from being buried at the end of the article, the term ‘Islamic extremists’ is dodgy. Not because of danger of causing offense,
but because it is buying into their narrative, making it seem as if those Muslims who don’t aspire to plant bombs are insufficiently devout.

The real interaction of Islam and terror here is analogous to that of catholicism and paedophilia -the religion is a shield behind which individuals or small groups hide.

‘The people that were arrested are good people. They go to the mosque. They go to school, go to college’

That sounds similar to a parishioner defending a priest caught fiddling with the altar boys – ‘one of us and impressively devout, so good’.

The mistake of the Fox News crowd (and Belle, perhaps?) is that thinking that because a phrase will offend people like the guy quoted above, that is in itself sufficient reason to use it prominently, regardless of its accuracy or other implications.

‘Christ is Love’, but it is still wrong to love some people (i.e. altar boys).

Compared to Christianity in particular, Islam as a religion has relatively few moral qualms about war – unlike Jesus, Mohammed would totally have invaded Iraq.

That does not make those who kill wrongly islamic extremists, any more than those who love wrongly are christian extremists.

note: those who say riot in response to cartoons, or picket gay funerals, _are_ religious extremists, in that it is a religious, not a political, cause that they are taking ‘too far’ (in the judgement of the speaker, of course).

‘Compared to Christianity in particular, Islam as a religion has relatively few moral qualms about war – unlike Jesus, Mohammed would totally have invaded Iraq.’

This is a joke, yes?

Incidentally: ‘The fact of the matter is that, while most muslims are not terrorists, the relationship between Islam and violence isn’t imaginary, religously motivated violence is a very real part of their tradition, even to this day.’

This may be true (probably is…I speak as an atheist who couldn’t care less about what two thousand year old dead people have to say about anything). But it’s even more true of Christianity. The fact is that all religions are bad, monotheistic religions are the worst of all, and in ascending order of violence and cruelty, the three worst offenders are Judaism, Islam and then (the winner by a very long way) Christianity. Why people attempt to deny this (very obvious and easy to prove) fact is simply beyond me. I blame the schools.

‘You must have some awfully warped standards there.’

I think the word you are looking for is ‘accurate’.

How do the atheistic communist regimes in China and the Soviet Union rate in cruelty and violence during the last century?

Years ago I witnessed a fanatical Christian extremist, bible-whipping an infidel with a well worn leather-bound KJV … as I recall, the infidel turned and ran, with a bit of gold-leaf smeared across is right cheek.

‘Here, they’re a criminal minority.’

How the paranoid vision of American fundamentalist Christians has penetrated the minds of even those who call themselves ‘atheists’ could hardly have been given a clearer expression.

Brendan, do you think that brett said that muslims are a criminal minority in the USA?

That’s the only way I can make sense of your comment #50, and I’d hate to be accused of poor reading comprehension.

For whatever it’s worth, I live in Toronto, and that article was the first thing I read on the story, and I didn’t just notice the burial of the lede, if that’s what it was. Between the reference to Sept 2001 in the second paragraph and the fact that everyone here has been waiting for *exactly this story* for five years, for me it did go without saying that these guys were Muslims.

Here, they’re a criminal minority.

I thought ‘here’ it’s quite the opposite: ‘they’ are ‘the base’ of the ruling party (unlike, say, in Egypt), and they require ‘red meat’ to be thrown to them on a regular basis and they get it.

Yeah, Christians in American are a criminal minority. One of the worse and most extreme of them is kept in a terrible prison called the ‘White House’ and awful place of punishment where he is allowed to believe (in an unusual lapse of decency) he runs the country! Some more fundamentalist extremist Christians (who are, let’s not forget, a ‘criminal minority’) are forced to go to a terrible place of punishment called the ‘supreme court’ where they are forced to perform awful acts of degradation called ‘curtailing people’s civil liberties’. And yet, the horror, this grotesque attack on religious freedom goes unremarked upon by the atheist press and establishment, who run the country. No wonder, as Brett suggests, all Islamic countries, like the Lebanon and Indonesia and Turkey are all without exception Nazi dictatorships where all Christians are killed on site. Just like in the US. Luckily there are forces of liberalism and tolerance like the Lord’s Resistance Army and Equatorial Guinea where (as Brett suggests, like all Christians) they ‘don’t really believe their own Christianity’, and cut apostate’s hands off and murder them in a spirit of ecumenicalism.

Incidentally, outside Planet Strange Right Wing America, plenty of countries hassle Muslims. The most ‘unfree’ country in the world in terms of being able to practice your own religion (including Islam) is China, also the most populous. And popular wingnut whipping boy Robert Mugabe is a staunch Roman Catholic.

“Incidentally, if you want to look at the history of the last 1000 years, I think you will find it pretty easy to put deaths attributable directly or indirectly to Christianity into the 100s of millions. Islam would be ‘lucky’ to get to 50 (and even then only by assuming that everything ‘they’ say about the Muslim invasion of India is true).”

I don’t get it; why is comparing religions supposed to make Christianity look worse than Islam or Judaism?
The body count does not impress me. At all. Islam had less of an impact for good or ill. Judaism too.
They may have killed fewer people. They also totally failed to evolve into modern secular societies on their own.
A good or even bog-standard liberal might be expected to recognize that absent Western Christendom, he would not exist.
I’m an Atheist but don’t see why I should hate particularly (that is, more than other religions) the one religion linked to the creation of the modern, Western world.
Is this some American thing a European can’t understand?

P.S.
Does Brendan really think American Christians are just waiting for an opportunity to start force-feeding their (cooked) unsaved neighbours to one another, LRA-style?
Hasn’t he heard of the Liberian civil war? Or the Congo?

Abb1, I think it’s a mistake to argue these things on the winger’s own terms, as if it was true that Muslim societies are all dictatorships or whatever. The objective and incontrevertible fact is that all Muslim states are NOT dictatorships. Hence the counter example of Turkey, Indonesia and Lebanon. The idea that these countries democratised because of ‘us’ is farcical: in the latter two it is much more obviously because ‘we’ attempted to prevent democracy happening there for many decades.

This is nothing more than the old right wing ‘darkies aren’t ready for democracy yet’, in new ‘politically correct’ and ‘culturally sensitive’ clothing. The twist this time is that they might be allowed to have democracy if this is imposed on them by the ‘West’ and if, of course, their choices and options are firmly controlled by more ‘advanced’ civilisations (i.e. us). So ‘democracy’ is allowable in Iraq because if the fuzzy wuzzies vote in the wrong people we can shoot them to show them the error of their ways. But it is not allowable in Palestine, because yada yada yada.

‘Does Brendan really think American Christians are just waiting for an opportunity to start force-feeding their (cooked) unsaved neighbours to one another, LRA-style?’

No I think extremist right wing Christians have a long term game plan to turn America into a theocracy, becuase they do, and they have said so, often. If you choose not to listen, your look out. People thought Hitler was a joke in the ’20s too.

Incidentally, I realise that I have been mistaken about everything my entire life. I always thought that democracy came from the struggle AGAINST Christianity, in Rwanda, in the South American terror states, in Nazi Germay, in Franco’s Spain, just like I always thought that (for example) Galileo had to fight AGAINST Christianity to achieve what he achieved. But now I realise my mistake: apparently ‘I’ only exist because of Western Christendom, and I should genuflect towards religion every time I want to express atheistical opinions, or something.

Remember Lurker, LGF and Fox news are the only REAL news. All the rest of the media are controlled by Muslims and Communists. Whatever you do don’t listen or they might contaminate your precious bodily fluids.

@post 63,
I don’t read the LGF, the stuff on LGF watch is creepy enough, thank you. I don’t need that kind of adrenaline highs.
Democracy came from a struggle against the established order, which in Christian countries included the Church, especially if established. But you might consider the role of churches in Black American history. All world religions are highly adaptable and can be used in various ways.
I did not intend to suggest genuflections, just that it seemed like Christianity was to you a limitless evil, worse than any other religion ever, and that is kind of hard to square with history as I’ve read it. (I mean, why isn’t the West a total cultural disaster area? From some POVs it is, of course.) It may be that as an ignorant European I just don’t understand your post. Just playing the Devil’s advocate. Sorry for any offense.

‘I did not intend to suggest genuflections, just that it seemed like Christianity was to you a limitless evil, worse than any other religion ever, and that is kind of hard to square with history as I’ve read it. (I mean, why isn’t the West a total cultural disaster area? From some POVs it is, of course.) It may be that as an ignorant European I just don’t understand your post. Just playing the Devil’s advocate. Sorry for any offense.’

Er…none taken. I wasn’t, incidentally, trying to suggest in anyway that Christianity was a ‘limitless evil’. I’m perfectly aware that there are good and bad Christians, and that much of our ‘secular’ thought had Christian antecedents. But it also had many non-Christian antecedents too. ‘Our’ democracies for example, draw on the republican/democratic traditions of Greece and Rome….not Christian traditions (this is complicated by the fact that Christianity as well drew much from Greece and Rome, but the pagan traditions came first). But our democratic tradition ALSO owes much to China (for example, the idea of a bureaucracy, and the idea of an egalitarian education system, entrance to which is by written exams…both Chinese ideas). It also owes much to Islamic ideas (for example the idea of EMPIRICAL science (not theoretical) is an Islamic invention).

In terms of political practice Islam is probably as bad as Christianity. But what makes Christianity unique is that the Imperialist impulse (at least since Constantine) seems to be far more ingrained in it than in either Islam or the Chinese traditions. Islam formed an empire: so did China. But these were both spatially contiguous. What was unique about the Europeans was the range of their Empires: they got on their boats and conquered all of Australasia, all of North, South and Central American, all of the Indian sub-continuent, all of China, almost all of Africa. No other culture has ever had this urge to subjugate on such a scale. (and the death tolls that resulted, not all of which, of course, were the Christian’s fault, were astronomical).

Islamic and Chinese maritime technology was infinitely superior to European, and they ‘discovered’ almost as much, but they stayed to trade and create trading routes, not, generally, to conquer.

And this urge to conquer was completely bound up with the Christian urge to ‘spread the word of God’, as well as to divide the world up into ‘Christendom’ and the ‘heathens’ or ‘barbarians’ (a bad habit the Christians took over from the Romans, who took it from the Greeks).

And they are still at it. It strikes me as incredible, literally unbelievable, that so many people can’t see what is in front of their eyes: the role of religion in this conflict. It is not in any sense a coincidence that George Bush and Tony Blair are Christians, or that Bush called this ‘a crusade’ nor that Blair has spoken in praise of the British Empire. If we were to go back 100 years and bring back some of the ‘great’ British Christian imperialists, they would see immediately what was going on in Iraq, and would be far less likely to be baffled by gibberish about ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and similar nonsense.

At the risk of taking people to a place they don’t want to go for a second, I think we have to admit this particular cover page subhead and photo placement *was* a little on the subtextual side.

Sadism seeks its excuses, and will manufacture them when necessary.
It’s more than likely the fertilizer was presented in a sting – by the arresting agencies or their proxies – and it’s also more than likely that the “extremism” itself was encouraged right up to the moment of arrest.
It’s an integral part of the dominant sickness that the production of bustable states and actions is allowable – even fun!
Getting someone to break, to scream, to explode, to surrender to murderous rage – all fine.
Passive aggression with newspaper and television coverage of the denouement.
Pestering the the already borderline into overt media-accessible legally-actionable wrong moves is the m.o. of whatever’s doing all this.

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Happy birthday, Ms. Waring.