National Public Radio aired a two-part series on counter-terrorism training on July 18 and 19. Omissions as to the nature of Islamic radicalism in the United States made the reports, by NPR’s Dina Temple Ralston, useless at best, misleading at worst.

“Terrorism Training Casts Pall Over Muslim Employee” (July 18) portrays Omar Al-Omari, former Multicultural Relations Officer for the Ohio Department of Public Safety, as a victim of “Islamophobia.” It does so by repeatedly omitting critical information.

“Imam Arrest Shows Shift in Muslim Outreach Effort” (July 19) refers to the FBI arrest of Miami imams Hafiz Khan and son Izhar Khan, along with other family members, on charges of “financing terrorism in Pakistan.” NPR avoids specifics while noting that Hafiz and Izhar Khan have pled “not guilty to all of the charges.”

Listeners never learn from the tax-supported network that FBI agents detained the Khans on four counts of conspiring to support deadly terrorism overseas and funding the Pakistani Taliban with approximately $45,000 from 2008 to 2010.

In installment I, Dina Temple Ralston reports that counter-terrorism trainers “suggested that [Omar al-Omari] had links to bad people — people who were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and even al-Qaida.” She does not report that those claims were not unsubstantiated.

Omitted, among other things, was al-Omari’s publication, in his official Ohio state capacity, of a brochure claiming that the definition of jihad as “holy war” is “a European concept” foreign to Islam. Also missing in action from the NPR segment was al-Omari’s listing of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and other Hamas and/or Brotherhood-linked groups – unindicted co-conspirators in the federal Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development trial – as “organizations we are working with.”

NPR likewise avoided information that al-Omari lost his state job for, in part, failing to disclose previous employment at Columbus State Community College, from which, according to The Columbus Dispatch, and as noted by a post on the Center for Security Policy website, he was fired for having a sexual affair with a student.

Installment II focused on heightened FBI cultural sensitivity in dealing with American Muslims. But by avoiding specifics regarding the charges against the Miami imams, NPR failed to provide listeners with any context as to the scope of criminal matters involving U.S. Islamic radicals.

In fact, about 35 of the top 50 domestic terrorism cases since al-Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001 destruction of New York City’s World Trade Center and attack on the Pentagon have involved financing or other support to Islamic terrorist groups, according to the Center on Law and Security at New York University’s school of law.

Who, what, when, where, why and how? The basics of journalism, but not of NPR’s series on counter-terrorism training. – By Sophie Linshitz, CAMERA Washington research intern.

Professor Efraim Inbar’s explains his thoughts on the reason for Israeli-Turkish tensions — thoughts that contrast with the overly-simplistic media narrative that casts that the Mavi Marmara incident as the primary reason for the deterioration of the relationship between the former allies:

Even a UN investigation (the Palmer Committee) dealing with the issue has apparently concluded that Israel’s actions were perfectly legal – much to Turkey’s chagrin. Moreover, the Turks on the ship were provocateurs, members of a terrorist organization, and violently resisted a legal attempt to take over the ship. As a matter of fact, Jerusalem deserves an apology and compensation.

Yet justice is not always triumphant and/or relevant in international relations. Indeed, Defense Minister Ehud Barak is reportedly willing to bow to Turkish demands, not because justice is on the Turkish side, but because he thinks that only an apology can repair Israeli-Turkish relations.

While good relations with Turkey are indeed quite valuable, the deterioration in relations is not due to Israeli actions in the Arab-Israeli arena or elsewhere, but to a major reorientation in Turkish foreign policy under the ruling Islamist AKP party.

More details in Inbar’s Jerusalem Post column.

Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon provides a succinct 6-minute history lesson on the Israeli Palestinian conflict, explaining where the terms “West Bank”, “occupied territories” and “67 Borders” originated and why they are misleading.

Youcef Nakarkhani (above), the pastor of several house churches in Iran is facing execution. The Voice of America provides some details:
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Karim al-Tamimi’s mother, about to join her son in the police vehicle, right before she is pulled away by a Palestinian man

When an Israeli hoax video surfaced in June, Robert Mackey of the New York Times’ Lede blog was all over it. There was this detailed June 27 blog post (“Israeli Video Blog Exposed As Hoax”), in which he goes to great effort to track down every angle about Israeli actor Omer Gershon impersonating a gay activist allegedly rebuffed by flotilla organizers. He mentions the Israeli hoax again on July 1, and gets further reinforcements from his colleagues Peter Catapano in the Opinionator blog and from Ethan Bronner in the print edition.

In contrast, when a Palestinian photographer is shown to have staged a scene, does Mackey apply the same no holds barred approach, holding not only the creators to task, but also the disseminators? Hardly. Instead, he posts a warm profile of photographer Narimen al-Tamimi, including the staged scene.
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Israel is once again the target of rockets that reached southern Israel from Gaza this month, July 2011.

Thousands of rockets have been fired from Gaza at southern Israel during the past decade. Hundreds of these have been fired since the supposed ceasefire of 2009. As Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor told the Security Council, “290 rockets and mortar shells were fired towards Israel so far in 2011, aimed at civilians, including children. ‘We sustain two attacks a day (on average). This is the daily reality.’ “

Between 75 to 94 percent of the children of Sderot in southern Israel show symptoms of post-traumatic stress, says Natal, the Israel Center for Victims of Terror and War. Yet many of these attacks are given little or no media attention unless an actual death results, such as the murder in April of 2011, of 16-year old Daniel Viflic, who was riding in a school bus when a missile from Gaza struck. Parents living in Sderot describe their fear of driving with more than one child in the car at a time; if the sirens go off giving the 15 second warning of an incoming rocket, they do not want to choose which child to save.

Noam Bedein of the Sderot Media Center, in an attempt to rectify the seeming indifference of the mainstream media to the ongoing bombing of Israel from Gaza, has written an Open Letter to the Mainstream Media dated July 15, 2011.
There, he writes,

Seven rockets, missiles and mortars have been launched from Gaza towards the western Negev’s communities over the last few days…The disproportional coverage of these rocket launchings and explosions is found in a dry, terse report on mainstream media that takes a few seconds of news time. The issue is barely mentioned by the msm…We at the Sderot Media Center urge you to emphasize these strikes more emphatically, to describe them as illegitimate and criminal examples of warfare against innocent civilians.

The letter goes on,

It is crucial to mention each time how many rockets have been launched against Israel since the last ceasefire of January 18, 2009.

As of today July 15th 2011, there have been 788 rocket launchings from Gaza aimed at the southern residents of Israel. This has to be brought home again and again so the world will know.

Would any fair-minded person expect a country to live at the receiving end of rockets from a neighbor, and is the launching of such rockets newsworthy only when they achieve their deadly goal? The intermittent, bland reports of rockets falling in southern Israel do not begin to capture the enormity of the harm done to those residents of southern Israel who have been living as the victims of continuous rocket fire for a decade.

Harriet Sherwood’s analysis piece in the Guardian on July 16 offers an example of the deceptive coverage that characterizes the British newspaper’s treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Reporting on a recent poll by Stanley Greenberg, Sherwood wrote

A recent opinion survey carried out in Gaza and the West Bank by the respected US pollster Stanley Greenberg found that at the top of the priority list for Palestinians were jobs, healthcare, water shortages and education. Mass protests against Israel, and even pursuing peace negotiations, came way down. Asked to choose, two-thirds favoured diplomatic engagement with Israel over violence.

By Sherwood’s account, one would believe the Palestinians to be moderate, practical and seeking some way out of the impasse with Israel. But she neglected to report what most of the poll questions (from a preview of the report in the Jerusalem Post) revealed: Unfettered extremism and hatred towards the Jews.

Here are some examples of what Sherwood did not report:
— 73 percent agree with the Hamas Charter’s urging Muslims to kill Jews wherever they can find them
— 92 percent opposed any form of sharing Jerusalem with the Jews
— 53 percent favored teaching songs about hating Jews to school children
— 66 percent see the “two-state solution as an interim stage en route to the ultimate goal of a single Palestinian state in all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea”

CIF watch has an excellent discussion of Sherwood’s piece: Peace: Harriet Sherwood’s Palestinian Caricature

Earlier this year, Karl Vick, the advocacy journalist most responsible for Time magazine’s anti-Israel bias, reported dismissively on Israeli concerns about anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hate indoctrination in Palestinian society. Suggesting that incitement is not a real issue deserving of thoughtful consideration — he put the word in scare quotes — but merely an excuse for Israel to blame the Palestinian leadership, he wrote:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas preaches nonviolence, and PA security forces coordinate discreetly with Israeli authorities to suppress attacks . . .

But Netanyahu found grounds to blame the Palestinian Authority, repeatedly calling on Abbas to cease “incitement” against Israel.

That might help explain why Vick, in a July 14 blog entry about a new poll of West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians, concealed from his readers some of the more disconcerting results of the poll. He titled his blog post “Poll Finds Palestinians Disenchanted with Hamas, Iran and the Peace Process.” But the results revealed far more than just “disenchantment.”

According to a more forthright report in the Jerusalem Post about the poll,

Seventy-two percent backed denying the thousands of years of Jewish history in Jerusalem … and 53% were in favor or teaching songs about hating Jews in Palestinian schools.

When given a quote from the Hamas Charter about the need for battalions from the Arab and Islamic world to defeat the Jews, 80% agreed. Seventy-three percent agreed with a quote from the charter (and a hadith, or tradition ascribed to the prophet Muhammad) about the need to kill Jews hiding behind stones and trees.

Vick insisted in his blog post that “The most striking finding … was Palestinians’ focus on daily life.” Vick might not be struck by the popularity of Jew hatred, but he still has a journalistic duty not to hide such information from Time‘s readers.

An interview by roving journalist Michael Totten with Esam El-Erian, a leading figure in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, reveals the irrational, conspiratorial mind-set that can be found within the Brotherhood.
Totten’s interview, published on the internet blog Pajamas Media, is especially refreshing because he presents it without significant editing. Erian’s disjointed responses to Totten’s questions are as troubling for their incoherence as for their content.

The recent controversy over the incident of a Huffington Post reporter plagiarizing the work of an independent journalist shines a light on the popular internet news site’s influence on the changing norms of journalism.

Another facet of the Huffington Post’s brand of journalism is its symbiotic relationship with Qatar’s state-financed news organization Al Jazeera. In early 2011, the Huffington Post ran a series of pieces supporting Al Jazeera’s efforts to convince major American cable companies to carry its newscasts.

From Jan. 30 to 31 alone, Huffington Post published four pieces promoting Al Jazeera, including one by Jeff Jarvis titled “We Want our Al Jazeera English Now” which calls the decision not to carry Al Jazeera “un-American.”

Another piece by Wadah Khanfar, the Director General of Al Jazeera, was a full page promotional piece for the network, citing its “Journalism of depth.”

Khanfar has become something of a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, creating the unusual circumstance where the head of a foreign-based media source owned by an autocratic head of state serves as a guest columnist for a major American news organization. As Daniel Korski, of the British based Spectator magazine wrote,

it cannot be overlooked that al-Jazeera is run and funded by a state, which itself stifles dissent – a subject al-Jazeera sometimes reports on, but rarely in detail. The chairman of the network’s board of directors is Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al-Thani, the former Qatari deputy minister of information.

The relationship between the Huffington Post and Al Jazeera only seems to be getting closer.

In March 2011, the Huffington Post published a piece by frequent contributor Shabina Khatri , a former Al Jazeera staffer, extolling life in Qatar, the home base of Al Jazeera. Khatri wrote “Qataris are for the most part known for living a comfortable lifestyle, and most wouldn’t dream of making a public stink about what they consider to be in-house problems in their country.”

As Cliff Kincaid, director of Accuracy in Media (AIM) and an ardent opponent of Al Jazeera’s efforts to insinuate itself into mainstream American media, noticed, Khatri steered clear of a blogger named Sultan al Khalaifi, who is sitting in a Qatari prison for writing about things which the authorities apparently disapprove.
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