Someone wanted to set off a bomb at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Washington. Luckily the suspicious bag holding the bomb was spotted,which likelysaved lives. As the Washington Post reported today:
“The device appeared to be operational, it appeared to be deadly, and it was intended to inflict multiple casualties,” said Special Agent Frederick Gutt, a spokesman for the FBI’s Seattle field office.
Law enforcement sources familiar with the device, which is being analyzed at the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., said it had a remote detonator and was positioned so that any blast would have been directed at the crowd of marchers.
Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News wonders why the story hasn’t received more media attention, particularly as a case of what would appear to be domestic terrorism. He writes:
When it emerged that alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner was an almost certainly mentally ill 22-year-old who seemed to follow some bizarre conspiracy theories but not the political rhetoric of Palin or the Tea Party, there was massive pushback from conservatives who accused the mainstream media of jumping to unfair conclusions. Most famously, Palin herself emerged to call this a “blood libel.” The former GOP veep nominee was savaged for using that charged term, but you have to wonder now if the pushback from Palin is actually a case of “mission accomplished.”
That’s because with this new episode in Spokane, not only have the pillars of the mainstream media not raced to any conclusions, but they seem to be in a competition as to who can most ignore the story altogether. But there’s no need to jump to unwarranted conclusions here; the actual facts have been laid out by the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency, the FBI — that we are dealing with a case of “domestic terrorism,” that the sophisticated device along the King Day parade route was capable of causing mass casualties, and the target was American citizens celebrating an icon of the progressive movement, Dr. King.
Maybe the implications are just a little too frightening for the mainstream media to want to deal with.
There’s a fairly well-documented history of media playing down domestic terror threats that don’t involve Arab or Muslim conspirators. Those that do are treated differently; there are plenty of cases where law enforcement stepped in long before such plans were operational– and yet much of the media coverage would still refer to them as a form of terrorism. The attempted Times Square bombing might be the closest analogy, and that received widespread media coverage, much of which called it an attempted terrorist attack.
In this case, it doesn’t seem like the media want to call it terrorism– or even news, for that matter. NBC Nightly News did a segment on the bomb plot yesterday, but anchor Brian Williamssaid thisat the end of the report:
All right, Pete Williams on what could have been a major news story out in Spokane. Pete, thanks.
Could have been?
Could have been, if the whoever was behind it was a brown-looking guy with a funny accept and a name like Achmed. And, btw, if that was to turn out to be the case, it WILL suddenly be a big news story.
Peter, in the interest of accuracy, it should be pointed out that in a number of cases, “law enforcement stepped in long before such plans were operational” …
Because they had instigated the plans in the first place.
In legal jargon, that’s referred to as “entrapment”, I believe.
It’s also damn good agitprop for the “Global War on Terror” ™, innit?
It’s a fairly simple equation for the rightwing corporate media,
You have white skin / ‘One of us’ = Physically incapable of being a ‘terrorist’
classicliberal2 has it exactly right. As far as I’ve seen, so far there are no suspects, but rest assured once they are, the complexion of the suspect (or their politics) will play a big role in the media treatment of the story.
I’ll bet even most FAIR readers have never heard of Robert Ferro. A man caught with the largest arsenal of weapons in the history of the U.S., the press coverage of his case was limited to two regional Southern California newspapers ( http://lefti.blogspot.com/2007/06/terrorist-pleads-guilty-press-yawns.html ). Why? Because the object of Ferro’s arsenal was Cuba.
Has the attempted bombing not received a lot of coverage?
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh012111.shtml
Certainly the event would have been much more newsworthy if the bomb had gone off, no?
Hardindr: The Spokane bombing attempt has not received much coverage; until today I hadn’t seen any coverage of it anywhere except on Rachel Maddow’s show. I read somewhere online that there had been a little story in the back pages of the New York Times, and my husband said he’d seen something in the Wall Street Journal. As Rachel said, why isn’t this national news? You’re probably right that it would have been more “newsworthy” if the bomb had gone off….
RE: oudiva
From the link in my above post:
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh012111.shtml
Should Spokane be getting more coverage? So far, there really isn’t a lot to coverâ┚¬”Âunless you want to start thumping the tub about an incident which remains murky. But in fact, Maddow grossly misstated the basic facts about the coverage which had appeared to that point. According to Nexis, the story had already been reported in a large number of national newspapers by Wednesday morningâ┚¬”Ânot just in the New York Times. Beyond that, it had been reported by Wednesday night on the Today show and on NBC Nightly News; on the Fox News Channel’s Special Report; on the CBS Morning News, the CBS Early Show, and the CBS Evening News (two nights); on Good Morning America, and on an array of CNN programs.
The Associated Press had filed three different reports.
I think the point is, or should be, that the coverage may have been wide, but it’s been shallow. The Wisconsin State Journal out of Madison had something like a three-paragraph blurb in the Nation/World digest section, as I recall.
Juxtapose that with the extended coverage of these FBI sting ops, and other incidents painted as “Islamoterror” that thankfully didn’t come to fruition.
In this case, it’s a matter of both degree and kind, don’t you think?
@Doug Latimer
The case is just starting, so there isn’t much to report, as Somerby notes. We’ll see how it develops, and what the media chooses to report, or not.
I think we have a pretty good idea, judging by how far right attacks – should this turn out to be one – have been handled in the past, wouldn’t you say?
And we also have a good idea how this would have been dealt with had this been an incident involving, or entrapping in some cases, Muslim suspects, don’t we?
There’s a double standard at work, don’t you think? Had this been the latter case, the history of such incidents would be raised ad nauseum. And yet there’s a long record of these crimes, from murders of individuals to attacks on institutions (see a partial list elsewhere on this blog), that rarely is mentioned as context in reporting such cases.
There’s a difference between perfunctory and in-depth reportage. In my experience, the latter is SOP for cases involving “the other”, and often skewed, and rare for those when the suspect(s) are of the Caucasian persuasion.
So the logical question to ask is, why is that?
As you say, we’ll see what develops. I don’t have a crystal ball, but off what’s transpired in the past, I can say that I have no compelling reason to think that history won’t repeat itself in this situation.
I guess that’s the Vulcan in me.
And it appears I was mistaken about the WSJ inclusion. A search at the paper’s site for “spokane, bomb” yielded one pertinent hit, for an online story posted Friday.
Bupkes for hard copy.
But the upcoming Packers/Bears title bout is front page news, don’t you know?
Priorities.
It seems interesting that this is the first IED, Iraqi or Afghani style, that I have heard of that (probably) was not built by the FBI to entrap some gullible, possible Muslim. The fact that there are no known perps means it’s not an FBI product. As Doug Latimer says, the FBI does the work to entrap the patsys and then makes a big deal out of it. Also, this area is known as a hotbead of Aryan Nation activity.
Sorry-hotbed
@Doug Latimer
I would put good money on this attempted attack being committed by somebody on the ultra-right/hard right, probably a neo-nazi or (less likely) someone in the patriot right, but I don’t know that for sure, and you don’t either, as you stated above. It’s pretty dangerous for investigators to make hard assumptions so early in the case. We’ll see what law enforcement comes up with as the case develops, and whether that evidence holds up to scrutiny in the press, and later, in a court of law.
I think the kind of attention this case has gotten is proportional to what it should get (ie. several wire service reports, television segments on network and cable news, several write ups in major newspapers, as Bob Somerby noted in his post last week) or that other cases of its type should have, whether they are attempted by muslims or not. Yes, terrorist attacks by muslims get a ridiculous amount of press coverage proportional to the amount of damage they could cause. This is the point of terrorism: to create a media event, and invite a disproportionate response from the government or society that suffers the attack. And, yes, the FBI has a poor track record in entrapment of muslims and hypes the threat that muslim terrorists pose this country. However, that doesn’t mean that the press should engage in similar behavior with other alleged crimes, should it?
But the upcoming Packers/Bears title bout is front page news, don’t you know?
Sports is pretty important to Americans, particularly football. The Packers/Bears (ie NFC championship contenders) are huge rivals, making the game even important. Is it surprising this game would get a lot of coverage, when so many people are interested in its outcome and will watch it?
If you go back over what I said, I was comparing coverage, not encouraging speculation about the perp(s) involved in the Spokane case.
That said, as Peter points out, there’s a history of downplaying far right attacks, and should this turn out to be one, there’s no reason to expect any different, is there?
What I think we’re both trying to say is that there’s a “background noise”, if you will, that accompanies any story about “Islamoterrorism”, real or manufactured, which you don’t hear in far right cases, although there have been substantially more incidents of the latter in this country.
Regardless of what is discovered here, that fact remains unchanged, and illustrates the bias of the corpress when it comes to defining “terrorism”. That’s due to their, and the gummint’s, intent, not that of the perpetrator. If you flip it, if neo-Nazis et al. are seeking pub with their acts, they have to have been pretty damn disappointed in the reaction they’ve elicited, don’t they?
As for sports, put it on the sports page, not plastered on the front page of the paper, as was done every day in the leadup to Wisconsin’s Rose Bowl appearance. Most sports fans can figure out where to find it, I’m guessing. You can always stick something in the top margin to aid those a bit slow on the uptake.
And, so you know, this is coming from (somebody’s god help me) a “sports fan”, who’s well aware of the rivalry, which dates from the beginnings of the league, although this is only the second time they’ve faced off in the postseason.
Now here’s Bob with the weather.
Football is a stupid distraction for people who have nothing better to do, with an added opportunity to take a side and cheer for that side, as if it really amounts to a hill of beans what the outcome is.
I think it is just above the level of “punkin’ chunkin”seen on the science channel.
@Raymond…..”punkin’ chuckin” leads me here [yes, i’m old]
Andy Griffith – What It Was, Was Football
Who ever it was is a murderer and a terrorist.Wether right, left, or center.My first guess would be a racist.Someone tied to a racist organization(Nazi-Klan). But History has shown that guess is probably wrong.Averages would say t is most likely a muslim attack.The religion of peace.Rationale unknown or even understood even once the case is solved.it probably is not a Jew.Probably not a lib or a tea party member.And probably not the President or his staff.Police will work on facts.So lets stop speculating with sly little insults.
Im putting ten on a 28 tear old Muslim man from Europe being the perp.And ten on the Pit in the super bowl.And Raymond……. you are uninvited to my superbowl party.You sound like a Debbie downer, kill joy,buzz kill.No soup for you!!!!!