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News sources editorialize by omission
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The Cincinnati Enquirer ran two stories this morning about the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, yesterday by an officer named Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 12 and wounded 31 people. One story was from the Associated Press and one was from The New York Times. The stories described the event, quoted President Obama, and said Major Hasan felt he had been harassed for being a Muslim and didn't want to be deployed to the Middle East war zone. Major Hasan, a psychiatrist, had also been given a poor performance rating by the Army, and was frustrated at not being able to leave the Army before his contractual commitment was complete. Also, the reports say that as a counselor Major Hasan had heard "horror stories" from soldiers back from the war.
According to the Times story by James Dao, Major Hasan's cousin Nader Hasan said he had not expressed anti-American views or radical ideas and he was a "good American." The Times did write that the AP said Hasan had "mentioned" suicide bombings and other threats on the Internet, but not whether he'd been for or against them.
A quick reading of the Times and AP stories gives the picture of a man emotionally afflicted by war stories. But if you hadn't heard news from any other sources, you wouldn't know that Hasan was not only against the government's policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, but had been increasingly agitated "since 9/11," according to his cousin. He had said that Muslims should not be fighting other Muslims. He had sympathized with suicide bombers who murder in the name of Islam.
These details were supplied by people who know Hasan well, a retired Army officer, and the cousin, in recorded telephone interviews. You could have heard them on Fox News last night. The AP and the Times could have heard them too. But they pick the details of their stories for particular reasons. Although these should be straight news stories, not editorials, the writers know their audience and editorialize by what they don't say as well as what they do say. The AP spent about a third as much space enumerating other mass murders in the U.S. as they did on this one, implying that this story is like all the others. The Times story said his cousin reported that Major Hasan had become more devout since his parents died in the late '90s, but not that he'd changed since 9/11.
The overall impression left by these two stories is not one of yet another radicalized Muslim, but of a soldier disturbed by horrific American war policy, who didn't want to go to war. As more facts emerge, no doubt some media will emphasize Major Hasan's emotional disturbance, not that he was capable of making an adult decision to kill.
If you only listen to or read one of the main news sources, which have been divided in the public mind as mainstream and other, or left and right, you'll find that by paying attention to both, you get not just different opinions, but different facts. If you have an assortment of facts, you can decide for yourself how much weight to give them.
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