Hypocrisy Now!

ABC's Assist to Campus Conservatives
Were censorship stories too good to check?
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

On February 1, ABC's World News Tonight offered an uncritical platform to conservatives who complain that their free speech is being curtailed on college campuses across the country.

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... ABC includeda clip from a documentary that makes a series of claims about allegedly anti-Israel professors, but made no attempt to balance that with a source who might challenge the arguments advanced in the documentary. The New York Civil Liberties Union, for example, has concluded that "the major academic-freedom problem arising out of the current Columbia controversy is that a film produced by a Boston-based advocacy group has provoked public officials and others to demand the punishment of certain identified Columbia professors based largely on the ideological positions that these professors have advanced in their writings and lectures." (NYCLU letter toVillage Voice, 2/2/05)

In a segment purportedly about free speech threats, ABC might have noted these issues, which include death threats against pro-Palestinian professors and the cancellation of at least one class because the teacher thought its criticisms of Israel might be too controversial. ThatColumbia instructor, Joseph Massad, has also publicly challenged the accuracy of charges made against him in the documentary. Including these aspects would have complicated the simple story ABC seemed to want to tell, however.

Harris also cited another case popular on right-wing websites: As he putit, this one happened at "Foothills College, where this freshman says he was told to get psychotherapy after refusing to write an essay criticizing the U.S. Constitution." The student, Ahmad Al-Qloushi, then appeared on ABC and said, "I was attacked and intimidated because I love America."

ABC apparently felt no need to check Al-Qloushi's claim-- an unusual journalistic decision, given that he is making a serious charge against a specific instructor. The network might have at least discovered that the name of the college is Foothill Junior College, not Foothills, as it is called on many right-wing websites that have taken up Al-Qloushi's cause.ABC might also have done well to examine Al-Qloushi's essay, which isavailable on the Internet (he did not "refuse to write" it, as Harris mistakenly reports). The essay is unresponsive to the assignment-- an examination of a book which argues that the U.S. Constitution reflected the elite interests of those who wrote it. Even conservative bloggerJames Joyner (Outside the Beltway, 1/16/05), after reviewing Al-Qloushi'swork, called it "an incredibly poorly written, error-ridden, pabulum-filled essay that essentially ignores the question put forth by the instructor." "I'd have given the exam a failing grade, too," wroteJoyner, who edits the journal Strategic Insights at the Naval Postgraduate School.