Two TV newscasts about the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations show a number of qualities that are present in almost all of CAIR’s TV appearances.
- CAIR is on TV every day. If it misses a day, it will be on two, three, or four times or more on the following day. Last year, CAIR was on TV over 440 times.
- When CAIR is on TV, it is always positive coverage. None of the hundreds and hundreds of yearly presentations of CAIR in the TV news are even mildly critical of the group.
- There is always something wrong, obscured, or misrepresented in the broadcast.
- The TV reports often recite CAIR press releases almost word for word.
This Monday KDFW broadcast begins by showing us still images of people wearing hairnets in a large room.
On the 911 national day of service today, the DFW chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations spent the afternoon working to help feed the hungry here in north Texas. Volunteers packed more than 100,000 meals and care packages. Their mission? To protect civil rights, enhance understanding of Islam, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.
It might take more than one viewing to realize that CAIR isn’t feeding anybody. CAIR reps are only stuffing the packages on behalf of another organization, U.S. Hunger, which KDFW never mentions even once in the broadcast. By practically reading word for word from CAIR’s press release, KDFW has produced a commercial for CAIR.
On the same day that CAIR was upstaging U.S. Hunger in Texas, KOVR, the CBS affiliate in Sacramento, California, was running the heartwarming story of Saeeda Islam’s acceptance into Yale University.
The reporter reads the details to us as if he were reading a bedtime story.
Saeeda Islam’s reality seemed only possible in a dream.
He then goes on to tell us about her humble origins in South Stockton as the daughter of a Pakistani father and Mexican mother, who now dwells among “the most brilliant minds in the world.” At Yale, we are told, Saeeda will pursue her “goal of studying her own identity as a Mexican and Pakistani American.”
Just before the end of the news segment, the station shows a picture of Saeeda speaking through a PA unit behind a CAIR banner, flanked by CAIR-Sacramento Executive Director Basim Elkarra.
That’s right, Saeeda is an activist and former employee of CAIR, as CAIR-Sacramento’s Programs Coordinator.
Was a CAIR press release about the very obscure Saeeda Islam the inspiration for this KOVR story?
It is broadcasts like these that make one wonder if CAIR is giving stations money to get on their shows, a possibility that newsrooms around the country insist is completely out of the question.
Very well, but that is exactly what it looks like. If you had a product or service you wanted to promote on TV, you would kill to have the kind of access CAIR is apparently receiving for free. According to Guidestar, CAIR had a media analyst appraise their access to the media at $143 million, and that is just one year. (Look under What have they accomplished so far and what’s next?)
Here is CAIR’s National Communications Director gleefully sharing statistics on the attention CAIR receives in the media. This is to be understood in the context of a complete lack of balanced coverage concerning CAIR in the last five and a half years. There is absolutely zero objective journalism about CAIR done on TV.
Like a sundial tracing the movement of the sun across the sky, one can see America’s branch of Hamas steadily advance in society. The time to complain about it is now, before it gets too dark.
