{"id":313589,"date":"2017-06-19T23:57:39","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T22:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/media-use-attack-on-mosque-to-smear-mosque\/"},"modified":"2017-06-19T23:57:39","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T22:57:39","slug":"media-use-attack-on-mosque-to-smear-mosque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/media-use-attack-on-mosque-to-smear-mosque\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Use Attack on Mosque to Smear Mosque"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Daily<\/a><\/p>\n

The Daily Mail<\/strong>‘s original headline on the attack on the Finsbury Park Mosque described it as “hate cleric Abu Hamza’s former mosque”–despite its having an entirely different leadership in place for the past 12 years.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

CNN<\/b>, the New York Times<\/b>, Daily Mail<\/b> and News.com.au <\/b>all decided to use last night\u2019s horrific attack on London\u2019s Finsbury Park Mosque welfare center as a chance to litigate the mosque\u2019s past behavior.<\/p>\n

A 48-year-old white man rammed his van into a crowd of people outside an Islamic welfare center associated with the Finsbury Park Mosque, killing one and injuring up to ten. Immediately, the “context” trolls at major corporate media decided to jump in and began digging up dirt on the victims\u2019 place of worship.<\/p>\n

The most egregious example stateside, CNN <\/b>(6\/19\/17<\/a>) dedicated almost 30 percent<\/a> of its article on the attack to dumping on the Finsbury Mosque, bringing in their resident \u201cterror expert\u201d Peter Bergen to paint a portrait of an Al Qaeda breeding ground:<\/p>\n

\n

Historic reputation <\/b><\/p>\n

CNN<\/b> national terror analyst Peter Bergen said the Finsbury Park neighborhood has a large Muslim population and the nearby mosque had a notorious reputation as a place where Islamist militants used to gather.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Bergen\u2019s analysis could be read as suggesting a justification for the attack on worshipers:<\/p>\n

\n

If you were interested in targeting a group of Muslims at a mosque that was notorious, this would be the mosque you would do it at. I think it’s significant that they had the reputation historically of being one of the most militant mosques in London.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

OK then. Thanks for that insight.<\/p>\n

CNN<\/b>\u2019s analyst appeared almost to be offering tactical advice to potential anti-Muslim terrorists:<\/p>\n

\n

Ramadan, particularly in a country like the UK, where the days are very long in June, you know you’re fasting from dawn to dusk and you’re breaking the fast at night…. Night comes pretty late in London this time of year. It wouldn’t be odd that you would have large numbers of people breaking their fasts and praying at this time.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The section went on for another 150 words, getting into narrow detail about the mosque\u2019s past associations. CNN<\/b> spent more words talking about Finsbury Park’s checkered past than they did quoting witnesses to the attack.<\/p>\n

Likewise, the New York Times<\/b> (6\/19\/17<\/a>) dedicated 100 words to the Finsbury Park Mosque\u2019s history, noting how it \u201cbecame a hotbed of Islamist militants\u201d 20 years ago. To the Times<\/b>\u2019 credit, they did note \u201cit was reconstituted\u201d with new management in 2005.<\/p>\n

Tabloids Daily Mail<\/b> (6\/19\/17<\/a>) and News.com.au<\/b> (6\/19\/17<\/a>) led with the Terror Mosque! framing. An original headline for the Daily Mail<\/b> read, \u201cWhite Van Driver Plows Into and Hurts at Least 10 People Outside Hate Cleric Abu Hamza\u2019s Former Mosque in London\u2019s Finsbury Park.\u201d The headline has since changed several times (presumably after online outrage<\/a>), and as of publication, the word \u201chate\u201d has been replaced with \u201cwell known.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rupert Murdoch\u2019s News.com.au<\/b> (6\/19\/17<\/a>) would take the award for the sleaziest iteration of the victim-blaming genre, printing a whole article on Finsbury Park Mosque\u2019s \u201cradical\u201d past without even once mentioning the attack itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinsbury Park Mosque Links to Radical Islamic Terrorism,\u201d the headline screamed, followed by a photo of last night\u2019s attack captioned \u201cFinsbury Park Van Incident.\u201d It\u2019s possible the article was simply cut-and-pasted from a previous one on the mosque, but this was never made clear, and News.com.au<\/b> published the story and promoted it on social media late last night.<\/p>\n

Omitted from all of these articles, of course, was any good the mosque had done throughout the years. After being associated with 9\/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and would-be \u201cshoe bomber\u201d Richard Reid, Finsbury Park has gone to considerable lengths to redeem itself. But the \u201cterror experts\u201d and \u201ccontext\u201d mongers didn\u2019t feel the need to note the mosque’s work on interfaith outreach<\/a>, providing food for the homeless<\/a>, or how, in 2014, it won an award for combating extremism<\/a> in what the Islington Gazette<\/b> (11\/6\/14<\/a>) called an \u201cexceptional turnaround.\u201d<\/p>\n

As FAIR (3\/22\/17<\/a>) has noted before, a similar phenomenon of airing victims\u2019 \u201cdirty laundry\u201d a mere hours after they\u2019ve been killed is common for African-Americans targets of hate crimes and police killings.<\/p>\n

In contrast, when US or UK military facilities are attacked or US congresspeople are shot, it\u2019s not media practice to provide \u201ccontext\u201d as to why the US or UK military, or said US congressperson\u2019s specific actions, may have motivated the killer.<\/p>\n

There’s a difference between providing context and suggesting excuses; between explanation of motive and rationalization. The problem is when context only goes in one direction: in this case, in favor of the white supremacist forces wanting to paint Finsbury Park Mosque as, in effect, a militarized zone where no one is innocent and everyone is a combatant. So mentions of good works or interfaith outreach don’t fit; stories instead are populated with only one side, the side that just so happens to line up with the motives of the killer.<\/p>\n

When Muslim people kill, “context” is employed to suggest violence is tied to their religious or cultural milieu; when Muslim people are killed, context can be employed to justify it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span>
\nThis piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission from FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Daily Mail‘s original headline on the attack on the Finsbury Park Mosque described it as “hate cleric Abu Hamza’s former mosque”–despite its having an entirely different leadership in place for the past 12 years. CNN, the New York Times, Daily Mail and News.com.au all decided to use last night\u2019s horrific attack on London\u2019s Finsbury […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2521,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-313589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}