Over on my Dave Matthews Band news site today I posted about the DMB concert bomb plot outside Wrigley Field this weekend. Basically, a terrorist wannabe who was unknowingly dealing with undercover officers dropped what he thought was a bomb into a trash can and was then promptly arrested by said undercover officers.
The Chicago Tribune reported that authorities said the suspect "wasn't motivated by religious or political views but rather by a bizarre desire to undermine the mayor's political support and allow an associate to take control of the city."
But the suspect's name is Sami Samir Hassoun, and he's from Lebanon, so of course we got the fear-mongering headline, "Lebanese man charged in Wrigleyville bomb plot." (Earlier today the headline actually said "Lebanese immigrant" instead.) If the suspect was white, Christian and happened to be from, say, Saskatchewan, would we get a "Canadian immigrant charged in Wrigleyville bomb plot" headline? As Bob from Bob's Discount Furniture would say, "I doubt it."
Louis Klarevas, a professor at NYU's Center for Global Affairs, has an article on The Huffington Post condemning the people on Twitter who used Hassoun's arrest to fuel anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment and to propagate the "all Muslims are terrorists" stereotype. He's right to condemn these comments, but at the same time, you should come to expect them anytime you grant the masses a public platform. (Call it the "online newspaper comments section" phenomenon.)
You should not, however, come to expect these sentiments from major media outlets like the Chicago Tribune.
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