The domestic Muslim terror myth and how the media built it

FAIR - Since the Al Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001, the New York Times reports, "extremists have regularly executed smaller lethal assaults in the United States…. But the breakdown of extremist ideologies behind those attacks may come as a surprise."

The “surprise” is that more people are killed by “white supremacists, anti-government fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims”: 48 vs. 26 since 9/11, according to a study by the New America Foundation. (More comprehensive studies cited in a recent New York Times op-ed–6/16/15–show an even greater gap, with 254 killed in far-right violence since 9/11, according to West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, compared to 50 killed in jihadist-related terrorism.)

But in a piece all about the “mismatch between public perceptions and actual cases,” the entity most charged with making sure these match–the news media–doesn’t get much scrutiny, except from “some Muslim advocates” who “complain” of media double standards. There is research on this question–such as a study from University of Illinois communications professor Travis Dixon, summarized in the Champaign/Urbana News Gazette:

Between 2008 and 2012, about 6 percent of domestic terrorism suspects were Muslim, or about 1 in 17, according to FBI reports.

But in that same period, about 81 percent of the domestic terrorists described on national cable and network television news programs were Muslim.

Statistics like these would go a long way toward explaining why there might be readers for whom reports of non-Muslim terrorism “come as a surprise.”