Monday, February 19, 2007

MMFA misleads again (shocker!)

MMFA claims that it "...works daily to notify activists, journalists, pundits, and the general public about instances of misinformation, providing them with the resources to rebut false claims...." Hmm..interesting.

So if you happened to read this item filed on Friday (2/16), they try (and the keep word being try) to rebut Michael Savage's claim that no one is covering the religious connection of the Salt Lake City Mall Shooter because he is a Muslim. Their resources to rebut this included the following:

In fact, a number of media outlets identified Talovic as a Muslim. The Associated Press quoted FBI agent Patrick Kiernan saying that the bureau has no reason to believe Talovic "was motivated by religious extremism" or intended "an act of terrorism."

Notice that they don't actually list or link or give any examples of media outlets that identified Talovic as a Muslim. Also, the AP article they link to (on the NY Times website nonetheless) doesn't contain the quote attributed to the FBI agent. They have no source provided for this quote either. Presumably it appeared somewhere in an AP article. But not in the one that they cite.