The Media’s Islamophilia: RTE’s Coverage of the Woolwich Atrocity

In the aftermath of the frenzied bloodthirsty terror attack on a twenty-five year old soldier in Woolwich (London) on May the 22nd 2013, political leaders made concerted efforts to paint a harmonious gloss on Islamic relations. Whilst the media acknowledged an Islamist element, they attempted to deflect focus from religious aspects of the attack by offering a politicised narrative, and reinforcing a view that the killers do not represent Islam.

RTE, Ireland’s state-funded national broadcaster, misrepresented the threat posed by Islamists in Britain. It was stated at least twice on RTE’s prime 6.1 (six PM) news slot (23rd May) that the savage murder was the first terrorist attack in mainland Britain since the 7/7 Underground Bombings in 2005! News presenter Eileen Dunne stated:

The attack in Woolwich was the first terrorist attack in mainland Britain since the Underground Bombings in July 2005. It’s led to a new debate about the threat posed to Britain by militarised radical Islamists.

Similarly, journalist Paul O’Flynn, in a pre-recorded report on the story, stated almost identically:

The moment terror returned to the streets of London. The cruel callous killing is the first terrorist attack in mainland Britain since 2005. Back then four young Islamists set off suicide bombs on public transport. 52 people died and hundreds were wounded.

Screen-grab of the RTE Player:
 "First terrorist attack in mainland Britain since 2005"

Numerous other Islamist attacks on the British mainland, which went very much beyond a planning phase, have garnered substantial publicity. These include a co-ordinated attack just two weeks after 7/7, the 2007 London and Glasgow Airport attacks, and the 2008 Exeter Bombing. RTE features a very substantive amount of news content from the United Kingdom so this error represents a surprisingly large journalistic blunder.

Eileen Dunne’s claim was revised on the nine o’clock RTE News bulletin. The attack was now claimed to be the first “killing” since 2005. Paul O’Flynn’s report was also modified, and the claim was entirely removed. It is probable that complaints had been made about the factual content of RTE’s coverage.

The relevant RTE Player 6.1 video file (“First terrorist attack in mainland Britain since 2005”) remains on the website at the time of publication.

It is thought they were lone wolves similar to the suspects in the Boston Bombing.

So said Paul O’Flynn on 6.1 News, days after another suspect linked to the Boston Tsarnaev brothers, was shot dead by the FBI. The international media continues to label them as “lone wolf” terrorists, despite the gradual increase in arrests over the Boston Bombing, and the link with the Chechen region of Dagistan where Tamerlan Tsarnaev came to the attention of the Russian authorities after he met a known militant Islamist.

The English Defence League

RTE’s coverage of the terrorist attack, the day after the story emerged (23rd May), consistently labelled the English Defence League (EDL) as a “far-right” group (see RTE Player video clip entitled “UK Horror over Woolwich Murder”, which contains the relevant TV broadcast material), when reporting that there were some disturbances the previous night at a relatively modest protest in Woolwich, of approximately one hundred persons.

The label “far-right” carries essentially the same meaning as “fascist”. It also evokes neo-nazism. However, the media tends to apply the label to groups against immigration or the Islamic faith. The label is pejorative by its very nature, and as if to back up its implicit criticism, immediately afterward RTE featured an extended statement from a Muslim leader, one Asghar Bukhari of the ‘Muslim Affairs Committee UK’, a truncation of the name ‘Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK’. Bukhari stated, with reference to the Woolwich EDL protest:

And the EDL, classic kind of right-wing fascist group, have jumped on the bandwagon, and straight away they are out in the town centre…

Bukhari also brought up some highly emotive racial images to reinforce his criticism of the EDL:

What do they want from us? What do they want from the average Muslim, to hang us from the trees like what happened in the olden days to black people?

Screen-grab of the RTE Player featuring Asghar Bukhari of MPAC UK

In March of this year, a critical report by Chatham House asserted that the EDL do not conform to the classic signifying features of a far-right group. Members were often found to be of a relatively high employment status, and were not alienated from the democratic process. Their preoccupation was seen to be cultural, and perhaps xenophobic, rather than characteristically racial. Overt Sikh support for the EDL is a signifier of the phenomenon.

Whether or not the EDL constitute a fascist/far-right group, it is a breach of basic journalistic standards for any broadcaster to fail to provide some reply to such sustained criticism of the group’s character.

The Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK

RTE did not express any overt opinion of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK (MPAC UK) but, within the context of the report, Bukhari was presented as a mainstream Islamic leader, and, by implication, the representative of a mainstream Islamic organisation. Immediately before Bukhari’s contribution on the EDL, RTE journalist Martina Fitzgerald stated:

Today local and national Muslim leaders intervened, and appealed for calm, condemning the murder in the strongest terms.

However, Bukhari was shown in the footage condemning the EDL rather than the terrorist atrocity.

The Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK has gained notoriety for extremist views, and it is also somewhat ironic that the head figure of MPAC UK called the EDL racists and fascists, when a British All-Party Parliamentary Committee found that MPAC UK is happy to borrow traditional fascist and neo-Nazi concepts (see page 29), to reinforce their own views on Jews and Israel.

Giving broadcast time to groups and individuals known to possess extremist outlooks, which could in turn further their known political agendas, is irresponsible without advising viewers of the contentious nature of the groups and individuals.

Notably, there has been substantive criticism of television coverage in Britain, where the BBC and Channel 4 gave undue airspace to Anjem Choudary, the extremist preacher thought to be behind the radicalisation of the two killers.

Conclusions

RTE, particularly within its remit as a public service broadcaster, has a responsibility to report the news accurately. However, their news coverage suggests they have not moved beyond the ideological dogma that led them to accuse a priest in 2011 of being a predatory paedophile on a primetime TV programme, without substantive proof. This imbalance is further compounded by giving free voice to groups and individuals, possessing divisive extremist perspectives. Commentator Eoghan Harris believes that:

Bias in RTE, as in the BBC, begins at the bottom. And to make it worse, bias invisible to the broadcasters, seems as natural as the air they breathe.

Also published at Crethi Plethi. 

Some theories on the Boston Marathon Bombing

As the blasts occurred (Courtesy of Dan Lampariello-Reuters)

With news that the April 15^th terrorist assault on the Boston Marathon killed three, including an eight year old boy, and caused over one hundred and eighty to be injured (some critically), those touched by the tragedy and horror of this bloodthirsty indiscriminate attack on innocent civilians will of course be speculating a great deal on the source of the terrorism.

Definitive assertions would of course be unjustified at this stage but it is reasonably certain that the terrorist attack came from one of arguably three politically distinctive categories of terrorism.

Domestic terrorism

Numerous journalists have speculated that American right-wing extremists are responsible because the assault occurred on Tax Day, tax being an issue politicised in American politics perhaps to a greater extent than that of most other nations, partly due to being a traditionally low-tax economy that focused on a philosophy of small governance. A more European scale of governance, funded by the taxpayer is seen as impacting on liberty on a number of levels.

The attack also coincides with Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts, which commemorates the anniversary of the earliest battles for the American War of Independence, giving further credence to the right-wing extremists claim. However, prima facie, it seems that such a historic date would be more likely the cause of celebration for patriot groups, rather than a time to generate such widespread infamy in America.

On the other hand, some individuals or groups may of course see the date as a symbolic starting-point for further conflict with what they deem to be a State that has turned tyrannical, and in breach of the values espoused in the US Constitution. However, such groups tend to favour very symbolic targets, such as government institutions as well as certain organisations (e.g. abortion clinics) and related events that have a distinctive political character that they deem to be objectionable. 

The prospect of an Islamist attack

There is some reason to tentatively suspect that the attack originated from an Islamic source, be it a group, or an American citizen/convert:

A Middle East counter-terrorism official based in Jordan said the blasts “carry the hallmark of an organised terrorist group, like al-Qaeda”. He did not give actual evidence linking al-Qaeda to the bombing. “From the little information available, one can say it was a well-coordinated, well-targeted and near-simultaneous attack,” he said.

The counter-terrorism official highlighted the fact that the massacre featured the dual-assault hallmarks of an Islamist attack. This strategy of maximising casualties has become near ubiquitous for such groups. However, it should be noted that this same technique has also been used by other terrorist groups in the past, including the IRA.

It has been reported that the authorities investigating the case may suspect al Qaeda or an affiliated group although evidence is lacking at this early stage, and the search for a specific motivation remains open. Richard DesLauriers, the FBI agent in command of the investigation, stated that fragments recovered from the bombsite suggest the bombs were a specific pressure cooker based design that was recommended in al Qaeda’s magazine Inspire because they are easy to construct, can make use of widely available materials, and avoid detection from sniffer dogs. Such bombs have been used in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It has also been noted that Abdallah Dhu-al-Bajadin, a senior al Qaeda weapons specialist, made threats against the US last month. This coincided with a rash of threats from other al Qaeda affiliated sources.

The Inspire connection also rears its head with an article attributed to Abu Musab al-Suri, a well known Syrian terrorist, which described sports events as being one of “the most important enemy targets” in the US.

Islamists have shown a tendency to target the city of New York since the 1993 World Trade Centre attack. It took on a symbolic dimension, being the most successful Islamic attack on non-ambassadorial US soil until 9/11. This fact would make Boston a less likely target for Islamists, although it could perhaps become more attractive from a terrorist perspective since the city clearly possessed a lower rank of security, and numerous plots to attack New York since 9/11 were prevented.

The prospect of state-sanctioned terrorism

It tends to be the case that terrorist groups rapidly claim responsibility after an attack takes place. The objective for any terrorist group is to maximise gain in terms of political capital, and to bolster a fearsome reputation. Making the claim soon after a horrified public response, to what is typically a most callous act of murder, will inevitably burn the identity of the terrorist group into the collective consciousness of a society. The fact that no group or individual has claimed responsibility is puzzling, and leaves open the possibility that the attack might involve a foreign nation.

Iran has not been mentioned to a significant extent in the media as a possible source for the assault, even though their attacks on foreign soil, involving their elite Quds Force (part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard), and closely allied Hizbullah, have greatly increased in the last number of years. Indeed an attack in 2011 on the Saudi Ambassador to the United States is likely to have had Iranian/Quds origins.

It is thought the United States has been involved in extensive efforts to prevent Iran developing nuclear weaponry. In parallel, it has introduced increasing rounds of sanctions against the Islamic State, which have been taking an ever-increasing toll on its economy since 2012.

One would speculate that such an attack would have a degree of sophistication but the terrorists having used relatively crude technology, suggesting that an inexperienced individual or individuals constructed the bombs, works against the theory. However, the pressure cooker bomb is a common device found in Islamist insurgency, and some security experts have speculated in the media that the use of less experienced bomb makers could be intentional, with the aim of enhancing the possibility of escaping detection by US authorities.

Coda

Regardless of the source of this attack, the Boston Massacre is a tragic reminder of what terrorism truly constitutes.

Terrorism is the act of assaulting what are so often purely civilian events. In this instance it was a marathon in Boston, where competitors and bystanders were the sole target. It cannot even be said by apologists that this is simply an attack on Americans, over some sort of domestic or foreign policy, for the event attracts many international visitors. It is terrorism designed to maximise the carnage of innocents, be they men, women, children or infants.

The harm visited on the city will no doubt scar the victims, their families, and the greater community of Boston for years to come, giving rise to fear where there was once implicit trust. Yet it’s a community that has long possessed a strong individual identity, one that will surely survive the malign purpose of the instigators, whosoever they may be.

Update (19/4)

A dramatic sequence of events in the search for the Boston Marathon bombers has claimed the life of one police officer, and led to areas of Boston being placed in lockdown. The older of the suspects has been killed in a shootout with police. The younger second suspect continues to evade police despite a vast manhunt, which some speculate is due in part to the impact of social media.

The suspects were identified as brothers Tamerlan (26) and Dzhokhar (19) Tsarnaev, from Dagestan, a federal republic within the Russian Federation, which neighbours Chechnya. The brothers lived in the US for nearly a decade.

Dagestan is a principally Muslim region that has had substantive issues with Islamic insurgency and terrorism in recent decades, spilling over from chechnya, where there has been protracted conflict in an effort to gain independence. Whilst the conflict there has not threatened the US, regional Chechen fighters constitute part of the membership of certain groups fighting against the US presence in Afghanistan, with some believing Chechen rebels have links with al Qaeda.

The belief in an Islamist motive behind the attack has been strengthened, with an aunt of the brothers stating that Tamerlan Tsarnaev became a devout Muslim two years ago, while US government officials state that he travelled to Russia last year and returned to the US six months later. Similarly strong expressions of faith were made by the bothers on the Internet, with the suspects also expressing pride in their ethnic Chechen origins, and a desire to see independence from Russia. 

 
 
 
A similar article is featured at Crethi Plethi.