Inside the Beltway

THE T-WORD

Skittish broadcasters soft-pedaled the idea that terrorism was involved in the Nov. 5 mass murder at Fort Hood Army base by accused shooter U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

The word “terror,” in fact, was missing in 85 percent of the prime time news stories on ABC, CBS, and NBC in the aftermath that left 13 dead, according to a tally by the Culture and Media Institute, which tracked 48 reports.

The researchers found that even a reference to terrorism was made in only seven of the stories. The networks also appeared to be taking their cues from the White House.

“Before President Obama’s Nov. 10 speech during the memorial service at Fort Hood, 93 percent of the stories had ignored any terror connection. But after Mr. Obama hinted at what ABC called ‘Islamic extremist views,’ all three networks mentioned terrorism,” the study said.

But the nod was slight. CBS and NBC mentioned it once, ABC twice.

“The alleged attackers Muslim faith was not important either,” says Dan Gainor, vice president of the conservative press watchdog.

Slightly more than one-fourth - 29 percent - of evening news reports mentioned that Maj. Hasan was a Muslim. Of those, half - seven out of 14 - defended the religion or included experts to do so,” he adds.

THE P-WORD

The press is definitely getting friskier in coverage of the attack at Fort Hood.

Was Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan “psychotic?” asked National Public Radio on Wednesday.

The answer lay with medical officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, where the accused killer of 13 trained as a psychiatrist, and probing internal documents.

“Put it this way,” one source told NPR. “Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole.”

“When a group of key officials gathered in the spring of 2008 for their monthly meeting in a Bethesda, Md., office, one of the leading - and most perplexing - items on their agenda was: What should we do about Hasan?” says NPR correspondent Daniel Zwerdlin.

The officer had received poor evaluations and warnings about his work.

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