Fox ‘News Watch’ Focuses on CMI’s Ft. Hood Report

The Culture & Media Institute’s report on network coverage of Major Nidal Hasan and the Ft. Hood murders continues to gain media attention. On Nov. 14, Fox’s “News Watch” program led off with CMI’s findings.

“The Culture & Media Institute noticed something about the news coverage,” said host John Scott said of the Ft. Hood shooting. “Until President Obama spoke on Tuesday at a memorial service for the victims of the Ft. Hood attacks, 29 percent of evening news reports mentioned that Major Nical Malik Hasan was a Muslim. 93 percent of the stories ignored any terror connection. But after the president hinted at what ABC called ‘Islamic extremist views,” all three networks mentioned terrorism.”

Scott listed CMI’s other findings: 85 percent of reports didn’t mention the word “terror,” and the three broadcast networks referred to the terror connection just seven times in 48 reports.

The host then turned to syndicated columnist Cal Thomas for comment. “There’s a double standard in the media,” Thomas said. “Back in the 1980s, when the so-called ‘religious right,’ the conservative Christians came up in the political system, the media sent cameras to their churches. They stereotyped little old ladies and men driving pickup trucks. They labeled them ‘ultra-right,’ ‘extreme right,’ ‘fundamentalists’ – they didn’t care about labeling then. But now it’s hands off – no cameras in the mosques, no labeling of Islamic extremists beyond that word: a terrible double standard.