-By Warner Todd Huston
It is always amazing when a “news report” is merely just a rehash of some press release, or is, at the very least, a completely one sided report.
Such is the case with a recent UPI “report”, “Fight anti-Arab bigotry, Gonzalez told”.
UPI is wagging its finger at U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez via a group of “Arab leaders” who are warning the government “to fight anti-Arab bigotry.” The whole UPI “report” is nothing but the warnings of these so-called leaders about how filled with bigotry the USA is and how the government must fight it.
With all this hooplah, one would imagine that Arabs are being attacked, mistreated and discriminated against all across the country at an alarming rate. Arab “leader” James Zogby even makes the claim that the government must “reverse this disturbing and increasingly accepted trend of anti-Arab and Muslim bias”.
However, recent statistics of the hate crimes committed in 2005, show that only 11 percent represented anti-Muslim crime according to the FBI. By contrast, 68 percent was anti-Jewish. further, anti-Muslim crimes total less than 1,000 cases in the entire country whereas attacks on blacks and Jews as a result of bigotry number in the many thousands. So, claims of anti-Muslim crime being an “increasingly accepted trend” is overblown, nonsense.
Yet, UPI gives us the unvarnished claims of rampant anti-Muslim bigotry by these so-called leaders and gives us NO balanced view of the absurdity and outrageousness of their claims.
In other words, UPI was just a mouth piece for lies told by activists.
We should expect more from a “news” wire agency. It seems doubtful if we’ll ever get it, these days.