Thumbs down on Popkin's yellow journalism

Jim Popkin, a Senior Investigative Producer at NBC News, posted a blog post at Deep Background: NBC News Investigates last night that smacks of yellow journalism.  Popkin's blog post is about "controversial activists" who attended an Obama meeting with Muslims and Arabs in Springfield, VA.

Great!  More fuel to help racists and bigots demonize and marginalize Muslims and more red meat for the rabid McCain Smear Machine (aka McCain Campaign).

Enough already!

Popkin:  how is this newsworthy?  Have any of the folks whom you describe as "controversial activists" been charged with a crime?  Did you bother to look into who they are and explore what they stand for vis-a-vis their long track records of public interest works?  Don't Muslims and Arabs have a right to hear from the presidential campaigns?

Popkin needs to disclose the identities of these Bray critics.  Where is this video of Bray?  Post it and let us all be the judge of what was being said and what Bray did and said in response.  And since when is it controversial to oppose assassinations?

Popkin also needs to disclose the identities of CAIR and Awad's critics?  Who are these critics, especially the law-enforcement circle ones?  Oh, and about this "unindicted co-conspirators" stuff - conspiracy is such a vague charge and it is so broad as to be able ensnare people who have no criminal intent whatsoever.  And if CAIR or Awad are co-conspirators in anything illegal, then way on Earth, in this ongoing War on Terror, are they UNINDICTED?  The answer is simple - because there is absolutely nothing to support the baseless allegations leveled against CAIR and Awad.

Popkin says Ibrahim Hooper "abruptly ended the interview".  He answered his questions and probably sensed his yellow journalism inclinations and decided that CAIR had important journalists with meaningful inquiries that merited more attention than Popkin.

Bray and Awad did not return calls requesting comments, eh?  What's the point of commenting?  Popkin did not have the sense of even-handedness to disclose the critics upon whom he relies to tar and feather law abiding Americans with his sleazy innuendos.

This blog post by Popkin stinks - not because I don't agree with (which I don't) - but because is smacks of sensationalism and irresponsibility and Islamophobia.

Comments

[Lou]

The Obama campaign’s Muslim outreach director participated in a meeting in mid September that was attended by several controversial Muslim activists, NBC News has learned. The Obama campaign now concedes that was a misjudgment, and that its top Muslim staffer would not have attended the meeting if she had known the full participant list beforehand.

Dude, by quoting the article as you have, you inadvertently destroy your own argument. Silly boy. Your messiah, Obama, is the one that conceded it as a mistake. Hoping no one would take the time to read the article, are we? No such luck.