Racial Bias in Media Reporting of Terrorist Activity
- David Neiwert just suggests it, but I think it's impossible to not come to that conclusion. This arrest of the white supremacists should be major news in a terrorism-obsessed country. The FBI says this is major and that the information they stole and distributed poses a serious threat.
I can't say that I disagree. I don't think there's any evidence of a conscious racial bias per se, but the outcome certainly suggests one of those unconscious racial/ethnic biases that, once upon a time, newspaper editors were scrupulous about avoiding.
As Al-Muhajabah later wryly observes in Atrios' comments:
- I was just imagining the news coverage if Muslims had been caught doing the same thing the Davilas were. That seems to answer the question about bias.
This is exactly correct.