The Media's Complicity in Right Wing Slanders
by tristero
Ammar Campa-Najjar is trying to unseat an indicted Republican member of the House. This indicted Republican released one of the filthiest, most racist attack ads ever made against Campa-Najjar, one that has been condemned nearly everywhere.
So how does the Times (and nearly every other media outlet) report this? By giving free publicity to the Republican extremist:
The Republican's name is in the headline, not Ammar Campa-Najjar's.
The Republican's photo is at the top of the article not Ammar Campa-Najjar's.
The Republican's name begins the lede, not Ammar Campa-Najjar's.
The lede repeats salacious innuendo against Ammar Campa-Najjar.
Campa-Najjar isn't mentioned until graf 2 in which outrageous lies are directly quoted from the ad without any context and comment.
Graf 3 attempts to set context but is incompetently written, overly packed with nearly unreadable detail, some of which appears to support the lies of graf 2.
You have to wait until graf 4 before you start to learn that everything — everything — implied by the first 3 grafs is uncalled for, misleading, a total lie, and wrong.
This entire article could easily have been written to minimize free publicity for the Republican. But it wasn't, it was written with emphasis on the Republican. In short the Times just compounded the outrage.
This probably wasn't deliberate but it happens a lot.Until the media takes steps to prevent the extreme right from the deliberate gaming their coverage, nothing is likely to change.
See for yourself. Here's the text of the first four grafs so you don't need to click. I apologize that I'm inadvertently adding to the indicted Republican's free publicity by repeating his name here:
Representative Duncan Hunter, the California Republican whose re-election campaign has been imperiled by a federal indictment, has released a startling attack against his Democratic challenger, suggesting that he is an Islamic terrorist sympathizer and national security risk.
“Ammar Campa-Najjar is working to infiltrate Congress,” says the narrator of Mr. Hunter’s ad, released on YouTube, in reference to the Democrat running against him. “He’s used three different names to hide his family’s ties to terrorism.”
Mr. Campa-Najjar, who until Mr. Hunter’s troubles was considered a very long shot to win a predominantly Republican district in the San Diego suburbs, has a Mexican-American mother and a father who immigrated from the Middle East. His paternal grandfather, Muhammad Youssef al-Najjar, was involved with the plan to murder Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Germany in 1972; he was assassinated by Israeli military commandos in 1973.
Mr. Campa-Najjar has repeatedly denounced his grandfather’s actions. He is Christian and has often stressed his church activities.