Tag: terrorist
How Fox Invented A Fake Terrorist Attack To Demonize Muslims

Fabricating Fear: How Fox Invented A Fake Terrorist Attack To Demonize Muslims

Fox News falsely reported last Wednesday that a car accident at the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara, New York, was an act of terrorism. Much of the network’s coverage was based on reporting from correspondent Alexis McAdams, who attributed her information — later debunked — to anonymous law enforcement sources. A close look at Fox’s treatment of this event shows how the network manufactured a terrorist event out of thin air, and then blamed it on Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, and their supporters.

Fox News personalities and guests made at least 97 claims alleging or speculating that the crash was an act of terrorism or an attack from when the incident happened at 11:30 a.m. ET, until about approximately 5:15 p.m. ET, when Gov. Hochul stated that the explosion was not related to terrorism. From when the network first began reporting the crash, around 1:15 p.m. ET, through Gov. Hochul's statement, Fox News aired 1 hour and 45 minutes of on-screen text that speculated that the car crash at the U.S.-Canada border was an act of terrorism or an attack. Several Fox guests and personalities backpedaled their statements over the course of the timeframe.

The incident occurred on November 22, one of the busiest travel days of the year, at a border checkpoint between the United States and Canada. By 9:40 p.m. ET Wednesday evening, the FBI had concluded its investigation, determining that “no terrorism nexus was identified.” Local police have now taken over the investigation, and a cause of the crash has yet to be released. The Niagara police chief criticized media outlets for spreading misinformation about the crash, which he said had “created significant and unnecessary anxiety in the community.”

Right-wing media outlets including Fox News have consistently fearmongered about the purported threat of Muslims and Arabs looking to cross into the United States to carry out violence following an attack in Israel on October 7 by the armed wing of Hamas, the Palestinian organization that governs the occupied Gaza Strip. An estimated 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas attack; Israel responded with a bombardment and invasion of Gaza that has reportedly killed more than 14,000 Palestinians, an estimated 10,000 of whom are women and children. Incidents of anti-Muslim discrimination in the United States have skyrocketed over this period.

Fox quickly suggests Niagara crash was terrorism

Fox News was an early source to falsely claim the accident in Niagara was an act of terrorism, with the clear implication that it had been carried out by Islamists.

“High level police sources tell me this is an attempted terrorist attack,” Fox’s McAdams posted on X (formerly Twitter) at 1:53 p.m. ET on Wednesday, November 22. “Sources say the car was full of explosives. Both men inside dead.” By 3:16 p.m. ET, The New York Times reported, “A preliminary investigation has found that the car did not contain explosives,” which users on X added to McAdams’ post as a community note.

Fox's claim spreads, and a Fox anchor suggests Hamas may be to blame

McAdams’ post spread fast. Fox News border reporter Bill Melugin shared McAdams’ post to his more than 350,000 followers and made his own post paraphrasing and citing his colleague. Melugin later deleted that post, but his repost of McAdams’ initial message is still viewable on his timeline.

Around the same time, Fox News anchor John Roberts read McAdams’ reporting on air, including information not contained in her post.

“Alexis McAdams is reporting that according to high-level police sources, the explosion was an attempted terrorist attack,” Roberts said. “A lot of explosives in the vehicle at the time, the two people who were in the car are deceased, one Border Patrol officer was injured. Driving from the U.S. apparently to Canada, and were trying to drive toward the CBP [Customs and Border Protection] building.”

Roberts also suggested that Hamas might be behind the attack, claiming the “unrest in the Middle East that has spilled out past Israel” means there “could be operatives in this country sympathetic to terrorists who want to send a message here in the United States.”

Supercharged misinformation

From there it was off to the races, as other Fox News on-air talent and guests began pushing the narrative that the incident was an act of terrorism. “When you are talking about radical Islamic terrorism and the attacks against the United States, this has happened before," said senior correspondent Eric Shawn.

During the 2 p.m. hour of America Reports, Roberts speculated whether the two people involved were "acting alone” or if the explosion was “part of a larger plot.”

“How long have these people been in the country — are they American, are they foreign-born, are they radicalized, are they just trying to make a statement here?” he continued. “I mean, there’s so many possibilities.”

McAdams joined the program as well, reporting that there may have been a “second car possibly involved” and that the original car was “full of explosives, according to those high-level sources.” She added that “there’s going to be big crowds of people coming here to New York City for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade," insinuating it could be a target, and also repeated that the explosion was “a planned terrorist attack, according to high-level police sources who were on the ground."

Former Homeland Security adviser suggests “jihadists” may be behind it

Later that hour, former Homeland Security adviser Frances Townsend suggested, like Shawn before her, that Hamas or another group of “jihadists” may be to blame.

“We don't know yet whether or not this is attributed — can be attributed to Hamas or another terrorist group, but I will tell you from our own experience we know that this sort of bomb, this kind of a vehicle bomb is sort of a classic technique of, you know, jihadists,” Townsend said. “So I don't think law enforcement yet understands who it was or what the intended target was, but the detonation of an explosive, a vehicle explosive this size, is regrettably — look, there could have been many more casualties — but as I say, very much a hallmark of jihadists.”

Roberts interviewed Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who used the opportunity to go on an anti-migrant tirade. “We have a number of people, by the tens of thousands, who have entered this country with bad intentions,” Ramaswamy said.

Fox reporter stands by the terrorism claim even as it falls apart, before finally retracting it

At 4 p.m. ET, McAdams joinedYour World with Neil Cavuto to double down on her initial reporting, only to then retract it — all over the course of a few minutes.

“We’ve been checking in with police sources who were very confident just in the past hour or so saying that they believe this was a terrorist attack there, at that border crossing,” McAdams said. But the story had already started to fall apart.“
The bomb techs, who have lots of experience, thought that this was an explosive — that the car, I was told, had explosives in it, several explosives were in that vehicle,” she continued. “Now they’re backing that up, saying it was the way that the car landed that caused such an explosion.

”Finally, McAdams was forced to retract her initial claims. “We started seeing those conflicting reports, but that’s what happens with breaking news,” McAdams said. “They get new information, they give it to us, and we bring it back to the viewers.”

“So as of now, they’ve walked back that it was a possible terrorist attack,” she concluded.

Even after the report was retracted, Fox used the crash to attack Palestinians and migrants

Still, McAdams’ walkback didn’t prevent Fox from continuing to weaponize the incident against Palestinians and migrants.

On The Ingraham Angle, guest host Jason Chaffetz acknowledged the explosion might not have been an act of terrorism, but used it to argue for a nativist immigration policy anyway.

“Today's explosion at the border, regardless of the motive behind it, is a chilling reminder that we are all on high alert and living in a post-9/11 mindset, which means that our borders need to be secure,” Chaffetz said, adding, that the Biden administration doesn’t “have the political will to actually shut down the border."

Later that evening, Fox’s Kayleigh McEnany insinuated that it was only natural to assume the explosion was tied to Hamas or connected with Palestinian solidarity demonstrations.

“The crash was so fierce and in such a sensitive location that everyone's mind of course went to the same place — terror,” McEnany said on Jesse Watters Primetime. “With war in the Middle East, violent domestic protests, radicals calling for days of jihad, the FBI director telling us to be vigilant — we are all on edge.”

Fox's false reporting spread beyond Fox

McAdams’ misinformation reached far beyond the confines of Fox News.

On The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, host Clay Travis interviewed former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie about the incident, also citing McAdam’s reporting. “Alexis McAdams, who is at Fox News, says: 'High-level police sources tell me this is an attempted terror attack,'” Travis told his listeners.

“This should not be surprising to any of us,” Christie concluded.

On X, a paid X Premium account called The Insider Paper posted Fox News’ supposed confirmation that the car crash was an “attempted terrorist attack,” which was reposted by right-wing media figures including Richard Grenell and Colin Rugg, racking up thousands of reposts and millions of views.

Right-wing sites American Greatness, The Gateway Pundit, The Daily Caller, and PJ Media also amplified McAdams’ false report, only to be forced to update their stories after she retracted her initial claims.

There was no terrorist attack at the U.S.-Canadian border on Wednesday, November 22. But Fox News’ manufactured panic was very real, and risks exacerbating the threats that Muslims and Arabs in the United States already face.

Methodology

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on Fox News Channel for any of the terms “U.S,” “America,” “Canada,” “New York,” “Ontario,” “Niagara,” “Buffalo,” “border,” “rainbow,” “bridge,” “cross,” “checkpoint,” “FBI,” “CPB,” or “Villani” (including misspellings) within close proximity if any of the terms “car,” “vehicle,” “sedan,” “luxury,” “Bentley,” “crash,” “blast,” or “flame” of any variations of any of the terms “explosion,” “fire,” or “terror” from 11:30 a.m. ET November 22, 2023, when a luxury vehicle fatally crashed into a checkpoint at the U.S.-Canada border, through approximately 5:15 p.m. ET November 22, 2023, when New York Gov. Kathy Hochul held a press conference indicating that the crash was not a terror attack.

We included claims, which we defined as instances when an uninterrupted block of speech from a single speaker speculated that the car crash at the U.S.-Canada border was an act of terrorism. For host monologues, correspondent reports, and headlines, we considered a single claim to be the speech between played clips or read quotes. We did not consider the speech within the clip or quote unless a speaker in the segment positively affirmed said speech either directly before or after the clip was played or the quote was read.

We also manually scanned all video on Fox News Channel from 1:15 p.m. ET November 22, 2023, when the network first reported on the crash, through approximately 5:15 p.m. ET November 22, 2023, and timed all visual chyrons that speculated that the car crash at the U.S.-Canada border was an act of terrorism.

We rounded all times to the nearest minute.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Boko Haram Has Grown Stronger, More Lethal And Less Compromising

Boko Haram Has Grown Stronger, More Lethal And Less Compromising

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

In a year packed with terrorist attacks, the world’s deadliest militant group has carried out massacres the size of the San Bernardino, Calif., killings once or twice a week. And over time, it has undertaken dozens of attacks that dwarf November’s deadly rampage in Paris, sometimes shooting down several hundred civilians at a time.

Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist group, has been more deadly than Islamic State. And every time Nigeria’s army seems to have made substantial progress toward wiping it out, the group has quietly rebuilt. Its members cut the throats of schoolboys, casting them aside to bleed to death. And they behead victims, like Islamic State, and record the atrocities on video.

Although Boko Haram has at times threatened the West, it has largely focused on poor Nigerian villagers, far from the media spotlight.

Five years ago, in a clandestine interview in Kano, a leader of Boko Haram described acts of terrorism against the U.S. as “divine worship.”

“They are fighting Islam, and we will also fight them, if we get the chance,” he said.

Boko Haram, modeled on Afghanistan’s Taliban, was at its lowest ebb in 2010, with Nigerian authorities confident they had brought the organization to its knees after having killed 700 of its fighters in a battle the previous year. But Boko Haram went underground, regrouped and has since launched thousands of attacks. Last year, it was the world’s most deadly terrorist group, according to the Global Terrorism Index released recently by the Institute for Economics and Peace, a research group.

“It’s proven to be one of the most resilient organizations. It’s evolved quickly. It’s shifted alliances. It’s been pronounced dead numerous times,” said J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, another research group.

“At one point it had no outside support. Then they got support from al-Qaida. It dropped al-Qaida and went over to the new winning team, ISIS,” he said, referring to Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the recent terrorist attacks in Paris.

Boko Haram was blamed for recent twin suicide bombings in Kano, one carried out by an 11-year-old girl, and a market bombing in Yola that killed 34. The extremist group was responsible for 6,644 deaths in 2014, a 300 percent increase from the previous year, according to the Global Terrorism Index. In comparison, Islamic State killed 6,073 people in 2014.

The overall number of terrorism deaths increased from 18,111 in 2013 to 32,685 in 2014, the report said; the most terrifying place to live was in the northeast Nigeria region that is Boko Haram’s home turf.

Victims of the group, and of others like Somalia’s al-Shabaab, describe attackers displaying a cold, emotionless aura in some of the continent’s worst terrorist attacks, including two in Kenya: the Westgate shopping mall massacre in 2013, in which 67 people were killed; and another at Garissa University College in April, in which 148 were killed, most of them students. Both demonstrated how much damage a few heavily armed suicidal men can cause in a short time.

As in Paris and San Bernardino, typical Boko Haram attacks target people simply going about their business.

Dozens of terrorist fighters swarm into a village or town on motorcycles or in pickup trucks and open fire on a market or square. In many attacks, hundreds of people have been killed, some of them burned alive, according to survivors. Men and boys as young as 10 would be dragged from their houses and shot, or slaughtered with knives.

Hauwa Umar saw men’s beheaded bodies strewn about the town of Gwoza after Boko Haram attacked in August last year.

“There were uncountable bodies without heads,” she said in a March interview. “Boko Haram kept saying, ‘Stop crying! Stop crying!’ I couldn’t stop crying, and they’d shoot their guns in the air to shock you. But I kept on crying.”

Women and children were abducted as sex slaves. (Hundreds have been released in recent months, but not 219 girls still missing from among 276 abducted from Chibok last year.

Shehu Sani, a Nigerian senator and human rights activist, has been involved in repeated efforts to negotiate a cease-fire with Boko Haram under President Goodluck Jonathan and his successor, Muhammadu Buhari. But the talks, also designed to secure the freedom of the kidnapped Chibok girls, have so far failed. Buhari set a deadline to crush the militant group by December, but his office recently acknowledged that the effort would take longer.

Boko Haram has become more violent and more difficult to negotiate with since rebranding itself the Islamic State’s West Africa Province this year, Sani said.

“They have stepped up attacks on soft targets, killing innocent people,” he said.

The army’s success in driving Boko Haram from its forest hideouts in recent months merely resulted in the group going underground, moving to cities and launching attacks on civilians, Sani said.

Early on, the group acted like a religious cult, demanding that followers sell all of their “sinful” belongings including vehicles, furniture, televisions and even the tools of their trades to fill its coffers. Wives described husbands who refused to allow them to leave the house. The men grew long beards and came home with guns and bombs, the women said.

Later the group won funding and support from al-Qaida’s African affiliate, and early this year switched loyalties to Islamic State, embracing its apocalyptic ideology in return for its backing.

“With that type of ideological absolutism where they’re aspiring to be a universal empire of religion, there’s no compromise possible,” said Pham, the analyst, referring to Islamic State. “And Boko Haram is evolving the same ideology. Perhaps earlier in its history, when (it) was primarily a local concern and its ideology was not as rigid in its adherence to absolutism, perhaps there might have been a possibility of compromise. But that moment has gone by.

“To date, they have not shown themselves to be a direct threat to Western countries,” Pham said. “But I wouldn’t rule it out in the future. It has evolved very quickly. That they haven’t attacked foreign targets doesn’t mean they don’t have that ambition or couldn’t evolve a strategy.”

©2015 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: A man holds a sign that reads “Stop Boko Haram” at a rally to support Chadian troops heading to Cameroon to fight Boko Haram, in Ndjamena January 17, 2015. REUTERS/Emmanuel Braun 

 

Jury Convicts Blackwater Guards In Iraq Killing, But Appeals Expected

Jury Convicts Blackwater Guards In Iraq Killing, But Appeals Expected

By Timothy M. Phelps and Matt Hansen, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — A federal jury Wednesday convicted four former Blackwater security guards who had been charged with killing 14 Iraqis in Baghdad seven years ago in a shooting that became a symbol of U.S. treatment of Iraqi civilians.

After nearly 30 days of deliberation, the jury in found Nicholas Slatten guilty of first-degree murder, while three other guards — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard — were found guilty of voluntary manslaughter.

Prosecutors flew dozens of Iraqi witnesses to Washington to testify about scenes of graphic violence, including the father of a 9-year-old boy who said he watched his son’s brains fall out at his feet.

Prosecutors said the shootings, in which 37 people were killed or injured, were unprovoked, the result of trigger-happy civilian security guards nervous about intelligence reports that a white Kia carrying a car bomb was circulating in the city looking for a target.

The defense, which put on only four witnesses, said the killings were a tragic mistake that started when unknown Iraqis opened fire on a Blackwater convoy.

The verdict comes at a delicate time for the Obama administration, just as the U.S. is helping the new Iraqi government fight Islamic State militants. It was the insistence by the previous Iraqi government that Americans accused of crimes within the country be tried in Iraqi courts that led Obama to pull U.S. troops out in 2011.

“This verdict is a resounding affirmation of the commitment of the American people to the rule of law, even in times of war,” U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen, whose office led the prosecution, said in a statement.

Jurors reached guilty verdicts on nearly all of the combined 33 counts. Judge Royce C. Lamberth declared a mistrial on three remaining charges of manslaughter and attempted manslaughter for Heard.

Slatten could face life imprisonment, while the remaining three defendants face 30-year mandatory minimum sentences, according to prosecutors.

The four men remained impassive and motionless as the verdicts were read. Lamberth asked them to remain seated during the lengthy recitation.

Defense attorneys vowed to appeal the verdicts, saying they believed the government had erred in trying the men under the auspices of the Department of Defense, because they were not contractors with that department while working in Iraq. As Blackwater contractors, they provided security to State Department officials in the country.

“This was a long and complicated trial that raised a lot of issues with the jury that will be raised in a motion for a new trial,” David Schertler, the attorney who represented Heard, said.

The men will remain in custody despite defense attorneys’ objections that they posed no flight risk. In some cases, the defendants had even returned from trips overseas to attend the trial, attorneys noted.

Some lawmakers praised the verdict, saying it demonstrated that the federal government needed to do a better job of holding its contractors accountable.

“It should not have taken this long for justice to be served,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said in a statement.

Leahy has proposed legislation that would allow U.S. contractors to be more easily prosecuted for crimes they commit overseas.

AFP Photo/Ahmad al-Rubaye

Want more national and world news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter.

France To Probe ‘Jihadist’ Bungle

France To Probe ‘Jihadist’ Bungle

Paris (AFP) — France’s interior minister on Wednesday announced a wide-ranging probe into a series of blunders that saw three suspected jihadists waltz out of a French airport after being transferred from Turkish custody.

Authorities were left red-faced after an announcement they had arrested the three men at a Paris airport turned out to be false.

To make matters worse, it emerged the suspected French jihadists had been put on a different plane entirely to the southern city of Marseille, where they were — to their apparent surprise — able to walk freely from the airport on Tuesday.

In another snag, passport control failed to flag the men as suspicious, as a security databank was out of order at the time.

The government was however spared further blushes from the fiasco as the men handed themselves over to police on Wednesday — nearly a day later.

They were due to appear before an anti-terrorist judge.

“There was clearly a massive bungle but it was in large part due to … the absence of proper collaboration with Turkish authorities,” Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Info radio.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told journalists he had called for an administrative inquiry to “get to the bottom of what happened.”

He said he would also soon visit Turkey to avoid a repeat of the “malfunction.”

-‘Incredible … but true’ –

The trio included the 29-year-old brother-in-law of Toulouse jihadist Mohamed Merah, who was shot dead by police after he murdered seven people, including three children, in a 2012 killing spree.

A 27-year-old previously convicted over terrorism-related charges and links to a jihadist group, was also one of the three arrested in Turkey.

The interior ministry claimed that after the pilot of the Paris-bound flight refused to allow them on board the Turkish authorities put them on the flight to Marseille.

But it insisted that Paris did not become aware of the last-minute change of plan until after the men had landed on French soil.

One of the trio’s lawyers, Pierre Dunac, said the men were not questioned when they landed. “As incredible as it might seem, it’s true.”

The debacle came as France was juggling several extremist threats: Hundreds of citizens leaving to fight in Iraq and Syria, a national taken hostage and threatened with execution in Algeria and Islamic State jihadists calling for Muslims to kill French citizens.

On Friday, France conducted its first air strikes in Iraq against IS.

“France is not afraid,” Cazeneuve insisted this week, vowing the country was fully prepared to deal with any threat on home soil.

– ‘Laughing stock’ –

Critics of an already deeply unpopular government seized on the blunder, saying the jihadists had “made us the laughing stock of the world.”

“So we can send planes to Iraq but we can’t control our own borders?” said Christian Estrosi, a former government minister with the conservative opposition UMP.

Cazeneuve hit back, praising security and intelligence services for doing a “remarkable” job, citing daily arrests that had prevented “serious incidents”.

The three men were thought to have been arrested in Turkey on suspicion of being part of a network that recruited jihadists for Syria.

They handed themselves over to police in the south-western city of Toulouse.

One of the three, Imad Jebali, “told us by phone that the pressure was too great,” said Pierre Le Bonjour, another lawyer for the suspects.

“Clearly from the start… our clients showed a willingness to explain themselves to police and justice officials,” he said.

“We could only agree that it was the right thing to do.”

French authorities are wary about nationals who have traveled to Syria and Iraq — where the radical Islamic State group occupies large areas — and may return to their home country to stage attacks.

After Mohamed Merah’s death, it emerged that he had visited Pakistan and Afghanistan prior to his attacks and had been on the radar of French intelligence, who had gravely underestimated the threat he posed.

According to Cazeneuve, around 930 French citizens or residents, including at least 60 women, are either actively engaged in jihad in Iraq and Syria or are planning to go.

AFP Photo/Lionel Bonaventure

Interested in more world and political news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!