WaPo Declares ‘Lots of Drama, Less Substance’ at Yesterday’s Islamic Radicalization Hearings
Two men testified yesterday before a U.S. House of Representatives panel about how their loved ones were radicalized by Islamist extremists and how local mosque leaders did nothing to help alert U.S. authorities of the potential danger. Yet accounts of their testimony were buried in the Washington Post's front page March 11 story about the Homeland Security Committee's March 10 hearings formally entitled an inquiry into “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response.” Dismissing the radicalization hearings as “Lots of drama, less substance,” Post staffers David Fahrenthold and Michelle Boorstein spent the first five paragraphs devoted to Rep. Keith Ellison's (D-Mich.) emotional testimony. Fahrenthold and Boorstein then admitted there was substance to the hearings, noting in paragraph six how: Abdirizak Bihi, a Somali American from Minnesota, described how a nephew turned radical and left to fight with an Islamic militia in Somalia. He said religious leaders had discouraged him from going to the authorities, warning that “you will have eternal fire and hell” for betraying Islam. But the Post staffers quickly sought to downplay the hearings in the next paragraph. “But, this being Capitol Hill, there also were moments of pure theater and genuine acrimony,” Fahrenthold and Boorstein lamented, before recounting one example of each from a Republican and a Democrat. It wasn't until the 16th paragraph that the Post correspondents looked into
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on March 11, 2011. Filed under