Australian Broadcasting Corp. whitewashes drug bust of Islamic Council head
Robert Spencer May 30, 2014 at 8:57am Australia, journalistic bias 10 Comments
WA Islamic Council 2This story from ABC.net.au says that the arrested people had so much methylamphetamine on them that clearly they were major dealers. It identifies them by name as Ziad and Rabih Jneid, but doesn’t identify them further. However, an earlier version of the story that now resolves to the link below had a very different headline: “WA Islamic Council president Rateb Jneid among those charged over drugs, guns seizure.” Now all mention of Rabih Jneid’s connection to the Western Australian Islamic Council has been removed from the story.
And quite rightly, you may say, for the connection is only incidental; even though we have seen the jihadists of the Taliban and al Qaeda fund their jihads by means of drug trafficking, the WA Islamic Council is moderate, and anyway police haven’t given a hint of any possibility that Rabih Jneid was funding jihad activities by dealing drugs,
Maybe so, but if Rabih Jneid were the Roman Catholic Bishop of Perth, or a leading rabbi in Western Australia, would the Australian Broadcasting Corporation not find the discovery that he was a major drug trafficker newsworthy in connection with his position? Would it show a similar concern for the reputation of the institution involved, so as to scrub all mention of it from its coverage of the drug bust?
I doubt it.
