Tonight on the 10 PM news, KSTP-TV is going to revisit the Flying Imam story from last November.
Islamic men thrown off a Twin Cities flight. You've heard their side. Now hear from passengers.
That fun-size sound bite notwithstanding, this story might actually be worth watching. Their ads this morning promoted ambush style interviews of the Flying Imams themselves ,skulking outside their Phoenix redoubt. (Charged enough language for you? I really should be writing their promos).
You may recall, when this story first hit the press, there seemed to be a few provocative leads not followed. The dominant news source in town, the Star Tribune, was uninterested. Even when one of their own valued employees handed them a source, a story outline, and practically grabbed them by their hands and moved their fingers over the keyboard to type it out.
I was talking today with a guy I know; he'd been at a suburban hotel for an annual company sales meeting. The regional manager was having a difficult time speaking, since the party in the next conference room was praying about as loudly as is humanly possible, and had followed the prayers with a speaker who expressed in rather . . . forceful terms the depth of Muslim oppression in America. Unless there are several Muslim religious conferences going on in Minneapolis at the moment, I'd guess that might be the one. If so, I wonder if the reported truculence of the men might have been influenced, or at least reinforced, by the speaker. Whoever he was. I phoned the info in to the paper, as a good citizen. Wonder if there's anything to it.
And:
Back to work now; more tomorrow, including a discussion of the piece in the local paper about the background of that fellow who was kicked off the plane last week. I mean, given the questions and peculiarities of some of his associations, I am certain a full accounting is forthcoming.
Because I can't see any reason why such a piece wouldn't be written.
Ergo, I'm certain it's en route.
Quite certain.
Absolutely dead-bang positive.
Really. I also expect that a reporter will have called the hotel where the conference took place, found out who was in the adjacent room, contacted a representative of that organization, asked for a recap of what they heard, and ran the assessment past a newly prominent local politician [Keith Ellison] who was in attendance to see if it squared with his recollection. Said politician would also be asked about the deplaned imam's connections, regardless of whether this seemed like recrudescent Islamophobia, because these are crucial issues.
As I said at the time, THAT'S an article that would create a buzz in town. No matter what facts were actually uncovered in the investigation, people would be talking about it and buying copies of the paper and hitting the internet to check out this original investigative reporting, getting new information on a local issue of high interest.
But, the Star Tribune yawned and did nothing about. As the editor at the time, Anders Gyllenhaal, said:
I don't think the paper dropped this story, but I do think it had run its course. I would like to have seen a story delving into who these folks were, a good suggestion, but I don't think it's timely at this point. I think this is one of those stories that runs for a couple of days, then subsides. I gather you disagree, which is fine.
According to the instincts of the Star Tribune, that story was entirely played out within 3 weeks and not worthy of further comment. According to the instincts of KSTP, the story still has legs three months later and they're running it during sweeps week, when they're trying to attract their largest possible audience.
From the promos of tonight's broadcast, it looks like KSTP isn't following the exact angle Lileks proposed. But there's no reason they couldn't do a sequel. Competition in the news business is a beautiful thing and the Star Tribune has left underserved a significant market demand.
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