https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/11/28/ohio-state-university-warns-of-active-shooter-on-campus/
I read through this news article once and it seemed cohesive, well-constructed, and overall an exemplary piece of investigative integrity. Except for one sentence that was none of these.
The article talks about the violent attack that took place on Friday ate the Ohio State University campus, in which a student used both his vehicle and a knife as his primary weapons. He was reported to have slashing around and causing mayhem in an uncalculated and erratic manner. The article includes multiple eyewitness reports, most of which corroborate one another thus providing sound evidence that the events took place as described in the news story. But, halfway through the piece is a very odd paragraph that for some reason tries to theorize on the attacker’s potential motives. It reads: “Local police are still leading the investigation, and a motive was far from clear. The Islamic State and Al Qaeda have publicly called for supporters to use vehicles as weapons, as an attacker who killed dozens in Nice over the summer did.” Wait, what?
Where did this come from? How is Al-Qaeda related to any of this? I am just perplexed. At no other point in the article is any of this mentioned. Kathy Lynn Gray, the author of this particular piece, is showing her bias in a laughable attempt to link an incident in Ohio to a terrorist attack in Nic with absolutely no evidence. She doesn’t even have the guts to say that the attacker may be in cahoots with Al-Qaeda or Islamic extremists, she just implies it by throwing it in there “subliminally”. It immediately jumped out at me when reading it, but I’m sure this wasn’t the case for everyone reading the Washington Post. Skimmers doubtlessly read right through it without a second glance, and many might unconsciously attribute the attack to those damn Muslims despite the lack of any connection. This is especially true if you happen to already be biased against Muslims, as biased views tend to augment each other easily. Gray’s complete lack of journalistic integrity may cause the further alienation of minorities in the spread of fear against “others”. In other words, this article is the real act of terror.
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