Farmer, once more I am the cynical one, I guess. I think you are too easy on the MSM. You and I do indeed have our points of view, but we are careful not to corrupt basic facts of the matter when we write. The MSM seem under no such compunction: from the Rathergate memo to the way the recent intel report was handled. It seems to me that the MSM have particular directions they wish to see the country take, and write accordingly. I think some of them even are aware of it, but think they are writing for the "greater good" or perhaps "the bigger truth." (see Duranty at the NYT) Check out this post with links from the John Locke Foundation. I have difficulty understanding this behavior with your "Friendly v Unfriendly" paradigm. If they were interested in reporting fairly, the corrections on the Intel story would also have been front-page.

To the above, I must add a level of ignorance that seems to me culpable. For example, it is now over 5 years since 9/11. Most reporting on Islam, however, betrays a lack of serious study of the history and beliefs of that religion, especially Islam's relations with other religions and cultures over its history. At its best, this is laziness, at its worst, it is frivolity. Either term fits the definition of the classic deadly sin sloth.

I refer you to this post on Jihadwatch on the media's inability or unwillingness to ask hard questions of Muslim spokesmen. Here is a portion of the post "Falsifying history as a debating tool."

Both Hugh Fitzgerald and I have written about Islamic apologist and media darling Reza Aslan, noting some of his innumerable distortions -- for one, he calls Muhammad’s community in Medina “a communal, egalitarian society dedicated to pluralism and tolerance.” Sure it was -- with the women veiled and the three Jewish tribes ultimately exiled or massacred by the prophet of Islam. Other than that, it was very pluralistic and egalitarian.
. . .
Here is another example: in ‘Reza Aslan’s Pogrom Amnesia,’ the ever-insightful Ilana Mercer has posted a link to a post by Myles Kantor about a debate between atheist crusader Sam Harris and Aslan. In that debate, Aslan again uses whitewashed history as a debating tool:

About Reza Aslan, the darling of the media on all things Muslim, Myles Kantor observes the following:
“Last night I watched Sam Harris and Reza Aslan’s January 25 debate on religion at the Los Angeles Public Library. Toward the end, Harris noted the anti-Semitic character of the Middle East before the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Aslan responded in reference to pre-state Israel, ‘Before 1948, of course, there were tens of thousands of Jews living alongside their Arab neighbors without any problem at all.’

Without any problem at all? How about the Jerusalem pogrom in 1920 and the Jaffa pogrom in 1921? Or Arab massacres of Jews in Hebron and Safad in 1929? Or the Tiberias pogrom in 1938? (There was a reason the Sephardic Jewish sage Maimonides wrote in 1172 regarding Arabs, ‘Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they.’)


Perhaps ignorance of Islamic history is too kind an analysis. MSM reporters regularly are deferential to Islamic spokesmen. For once I would like to see the same adversarial attitude shown in White House Press Conferences applied here.