On the first Sunday after the San Bernardino attacks, CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter ignored that in favor of a one-hour program focused on Donald Trump. Then on December 13, Stelter talked to al-Jazeera host (and former CNN anchor) Ali Velshi, and again he skipped over the murders of San Bernardino. Syed Farook? Tashfeen Malik? Stelter's only villain worth discussing was Trump.
Stelter failed to ask the al-Jazeera staffer about the bizarre opinion by an al-Jazeera staffer that mass murderer Malik should not have pictured without her burqa. It was “disrespectful” to the mass shooter. Stelter only felt the pain of Muslim journalists, that they don’t have a “Muslim Jorge Ramos.” In other words, Muslims need an aggressive loudmouth leftist activist or better yet, a leftist activist group of reporters.
STELTER: At a moment like this, do you feel a responsibility to speak not just as a journalist, but as a journalist who is Muslim, in part because there's not a whole lot of representation on television airwaves? You know, there is no -- there is no Muslim Jorge Ramos. We all know Jorge Ramos speaks...
VELSHI: Right.
STELTER: ... for Hispanic America on Univision. That's what he says he does.
VELSHI: Right.
STELTER: There's a big National Association of Hispanic Journalists, for example, that has harshly criticized Trump. There isn't exactly a version of that in the Muslim community in the U.S.
There’s a reason Stelter said “not exactly.” There is a South Asian Journalists Association – a group that hosts an Iftar dinner at the end of Ramadan, and has welcomed Ali Velshi as a keynote speaker. Velshi continued with a lecture:
VELSHI: Yes. And, in many ways, Muslims in journalism, for instance, haven't reached critical mass in a way that would cause there to be these organizations. And, at the same -- I think Fareed said it so well. I tweeted out what Fareed said. And I have to tell you, I got some really nasty responses -- so did he -- about going back home and things like that.
But, like Fareed, I don't get up in the morning and identify based on the color of my skin or my religion. There are many Muslims, very much like Jews or Christians or Catholics, who identify very clearly with their religion, but that's not how they think of themselves on a daily basis. So, if you can imagine that, we certainly don't think of ourselves as terrorists or having anything to do with these terrorists.
So, until the pressure builds to the point that you have to start to answer for other Muslims, you don't see a particular need to do so. Now, that said, you know, there's an impression out there that mainstream Muslims don't come out and say enough in opposition to terrorists.
But, as I like to point out, mainstream Muslims are your taxi drivers, they're your pharmacists, they're your doctors, they're your accountants, they're your office workers. They don't see themselves -- when they see these appalling things that are done, they don't identify with them.
But what they do identify with is candidates like Trump and, by the way, others, most of the others in the Republican lineup, who want to single out Muslims as an entire group for the actions of identifiable extremists. And that's the part that becomes troubling, because it incites hatred toward these groups.
Stelter had played a clip of CNN host Fareed Zakaria editorializing against Trump on CNN: "But in today's political climate, I must embrace another identity. I'm Muslim. Now, I'm not a practicing Muslim. The last time I was in a mosque was decades ago. I'm completely secular in my outlook. But as I watch the way in which Republican candidates are dividing Americans, I realize that it's important to acknowledge the religion into which I was born. And yet that identity doesn't fully represent me or my views. I am appalled by Donald Trump's bigotry and demagoguery, not because I'm a Muslim, but because I'm an American. "
Stelter concluded the segment with another push for activism against Trump and other Republicans:
And so, on television, on the airwaves, online, we need to hear from Muslims who are journalists, many other Muslims as well. Let me end with one tweet actually this morning from one of your colleagues at Al-Jazeera. I thought this said it really well. He was watching one of the other Sunday morning shows, some unnamed network, and he wrote that he saw four white pundits and a white host debating Donald Trump's Muslim comments, and then he just wrote, "Sigh."
As usual, they pretend there are no white Muslims. The offending show was ABC's This Week -- which had a panel with two men (Bill Kristol, David Brody) and two women (Robyn Wright, Nancy Gibbs). Stelter didn't note that ABC also had a segment with two Muslims: Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) and Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR.
Stelter also avoided the information that while the name and tweet of Mehdi Hasan was displayed on screen, it was not revealed that Hasan is a "presenter" with Al-Jazeera....just like Velshi.
