Editors at National Review Online question legacy media outlets’ approach to a recent headline-grabbing story.
On Saturday, an internet troll named Jake Lang staged an anti-Muslim protest in front of Gracie Mansion — currently the residence of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Both its title (“Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City”) and scheduled main event (a “pig roast”) made its nature as an attention-getting provocation clear enough. Lang expected angry counterprotesters and received them in due course.
What neither he nor any of the peaceful counterprotesters in attendance expected was for two young men — identified in reports as Emir Balat (age 18) and Ibrahim Kayumi (age 19) — to rush forward, shout “Allahu akbar,” and hurl improvised explosive devices into the crowd. The bombs, filled with bolts and screws, thankfully failed to detonate, and the two men were immediately apprehended by a fast-moving NYPD.
There is no doubt as to their motivations: Both men spoke freely and unrepentantly to police at the scene, proudly claiming inspiration from ISIS and stating they had intended their terrorist atrocity to be “bigger than Boston” — a reference to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that took the lives of three and injured scores more. Only the incompetence of the bombers prevented Saturday from turning into one of the darkest days in recent New York history.
Yet one would know none of this were one to go only by the headlines and framing devices the mainstream media have consistently used to explain this story to American readers, who — like it or not — primarily consume their news in headline rather than article form. …
… It is impossible not to notice that all of these headlines — or countless others from similarly situated media outlets — are carefully crafted to avoid stating a politically inconvenient truth: Islamic terrorists came horrifyingly close to detonating bombs in a crowd of protesters. Instead, our attention is directed toward the “hateful” nature of the rally, and readers are asked to fill in the missing narrative gaps with their own imaginations instead.
