Liberal media concealing terrorist identities

OPINION:

The media coverage of terrorist attacks and violence in the West is not merely a record of events; it is a battleground where narratives are forged. It shapes which forms of hatred we are permitted to condemn forcefully and which we are obliged to obscure.

A glaring double standard, rooted in a deep paradox at the heart of liberal discourse, is exposed when comparing the recent coverage of the antisemitic massacre in Sydney, Australia, with other incidents.

The contradiction is stark: A White person of interest in a fatal shooting at Brown University had his name published almost immediately, although he was released and cleared within hours of his detainment for lack of evidence of involvement. Conversely, after the antisemitic murders at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, media went to great lengths to conceal the identity and Pakistani Muslim origin of the perpetrators. Readers of many liberal newspapers practically had to act as detectives to determine who committed the Bondi Beach massacre.

This deliberate avoidance is the continuation of a pattern institutionalized years ago, which deliberately avoided terms such as “radical Islamist terror.” Although the legitimate need to protect minorities from Islamophobia is recognized, this concern has been weaponized, serving to silence legitimate criticism of terrorism and hatred. The ultimate price of this rhetorical protection is often paid by other minorities, most acutely the Jewish community.

The core distortion stems from an unofficial ethical rule in newsrooms: “Thou shalt not generalize.” Media feel compelled to exercise extreme caution in publishing the perpetrators’ identities to preemptively prevent an association between Islam and terrorism. This posture, however, leads to two highly problematic journalistic practices that distort reality:

• Obscuring the ideological motive:Coverage rapidly shifts focus to technical details while systematically omitting essential information, such as religious affiliation and the explicit ideological context. The objective is to prevent the reader from making the immediate, uncomfortable conclusion: “This is jihadi Islamic terrorism.” The reporting attempts to construct the incident as a localized, nonideological “criminal incident.”
• News management via the hero: To neutralize the problematic context, media often rush to publicize the Muslim identity of an individual who helped neutralize one of the attackers. This high-profile exposure serves a crucial function: to disconnect the entire community from the extremist act and reinforce the Western story of successful multiculturalism.

By blurring the lines, media contribute to a false picture that frames antisemitic terrorism primarily as a threat emanating from the far right.

This obfuscation prevents us from correctly defining the crime. This is not merely an antisemitic attack; it is jihadi antisemitism — a hatred intrinsically connected to the rejection of Israel. More precisely, in the post-Oct. 7, 2023, context, the Bondi Beach attack is the first truly realized manifestation of the call to “globalize the intifada,” a clear, actionable call for violence against Jews worldwide.

This concealment is a manipulative use of identity. Media highlight Jewish victims to confirm antisemitism as the motive for the crime while hiding the suspected killers’ ethnicity and religion to blur the jihadi connection.

Finally,to evoke pro-Muslim sentiment, it celebrates the Muslim hero who wrestled the gun away from one of the attackers.

Each detail serves to distance the event from its proper context: the convergence of antisemitic jihad with the antisemitism fostered by the radical left in the West.

This policy inevitably leads to discrimination. Media demonstrate extreme hypersensitivity about linking terrorism to Islam when the victims are Jewish. Yet, it is less sensitive to the generalization of Jews as legitimate targets in cases of Islamic or anti-Zionist antisemitism. This is why the response to political antisemitism on U.S. campuses after Oct. 7 was so slow. In fact, the bigotry seen on campuses was frequently categorized as legitimate political criticism.

The opposite standard is immediately applied when an act of violence is thought to have been committed by a Jewish extremist. The identity, community and affiliation of the suspect are immediately and emphatically exposed to serve a narrative of specific political condemnation. The quick exposure of the White suspect at Brown confirms that the “principle of caution” is not absolute but is instead a function of the political agenda.

Journalistic ethics require a consistent and equal standard. It is possible and necessary to condemn jihadi terrorism and name its full ideological motive while fighting Islamophobia. Only in this way can reporting serve the truth while ensuring the security and equal treatment of all minorities in the West.

• Nimrod Koren is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University, specializing in political and social dynamics in the region, and a regular contributor to The Jerusalem Post.