Reckless Disregard For The Truth
No, I'm not talking about Hugh anymore. Last week the Star Tribune published an editorial by Fedwa Wazwaz that argued that Islam had been unjustly attacked ever since 9/11, and that a campaign has been launched to malign it by the "Christian right" and good ol' neo-cons. He called a few of the perps out:
Joseph Farah, editor of the WorldNetDaily -- a Christian, right-wing paper -- advocates for each Israeli civilian killed 100 Palestinians should be killed, and for each Israeli child, 1,000 Palestinians.
When I originally read the piece I was stunned and had a hard time believing that Farah would actually call for such brutal retribution. And it turns out he didn't. Here's Farah's response at WorldNetDaily:
Aside from spelling my name correctly and accurately stating my title as editor, everything else in this sentence is a lie.
Well at least he got the name right. Farah goes on to refute Wazwaz's charges in detail and then asks how the Strib could allow such unfounded accusations to be published in the first place:
More disturbing, though, than the fact that some unknown Arab commentator would make inflammatory, inciteful remarks about me-- an Arab-American who is constantly targeted with death threats from the Muslim world -- is the fact that a supposedly responsible American newspaper would publish these deliberate and malicious falsehoods. The writer even cited for editors the supposed source of my comments. They are on the Internet, easy enough for any staffer or fact checker to examine in a matter of moments. Apparently no such process is in place at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The paper evidently allows unverified, libelous, hateful accusations to be made by contributors with reckless disregard for the truth.
Sadly, for those of us who read the Strib editorial page on a daily basis, this is hardly a surprising story. They've been there. They've done that.
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