Today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune has an article on the recent Twin Cities controversies involving taxis and check-out lines. Like so many “news” stories in the Strib, it’s an editorial posing as reportage. It begins with an anecdote about a Muslim teenager who decides not to “change who [she is] for $7 an hour” by working for Target, and presumably, scanning bacon. The theme of the article is that the recent incidents are unimportant; the implication is that those who express concern about them are bigots.
I wouldn’t bother to comment on this except that the reporter brings us into it:
And the backlash, Bihie says, has struck fear in his Somali community. He says it’s hard not to bristle when you read the hundreds of blog postings at the Star Tribune’s community Web site, www.buzz.mn, or items like this one, culled from the locally-based Power Line site: “Poor babies can’t touch bacon … boo hoo. Refuse to scan my bacon, and I guarantee you will be wearing it!”
Such vitriol bubbling up from a few incidents has drawn undue attention from non-Muslims, according to Atia Ibrahim….
There you have it. We’re vitriolic, and have struck fear into the Somali community. Odd thing, though: I didn’t write that line about “poor babies” who “can’t touch bacon,” and neither did Paul or Scott. That quote never appeared on Power Line. I know where the reporter dredged it up, though; it comes from a comment that someone made on the AOL News site where we post, along with several other liberal and conservative bloggers.
So why did the reporter falsely claim that the quote was “culled from the locally-based Power Line site”? I don’t know; he hasn’t answered my email yet.
It’s pretty obvious, though, that if he had said that he found the quote at AOL News, he couldn’t have said it was locally-based, and it would have been hard to sell the idea that an anonymous AOL commenter had “struck fear into the Somali community” in the Twin Cities. And, of course, the reporter probably has no particular animus against AOL.
That’s the Strib for you: agenda first, facts later. And they’re supposed to be the professionals.
PAUL adds: The “facts later” part is pretty generous to the Strib.
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