Mainstream Media Often Softens Their Reporting For Terrorists

The mainstream media seems to take it easy on their reporting of terrorists.

One could even say that the media would rather hate on Republicans than show any disdain for terrorists. Mainstream media outlets have before referred to the the leaders of Hezbollah and ISIS following their deaths as “charismatic and shrewd” and “austere religious scholar.” Such odd ways to identify people who have been behind plans resulting in the deaths of so many people.

Curtis Houck, Managing Editor of Media Research Center's NewsBusters, says the liberal media tries to be weirdly concerned and fair when reporting on the deaths of mass terrorists.

"They decide that they need to inject some sort of positive energy into these obituaries," said Houck.

Another example of this was when Qasem Soleimani was described as "Iran's most revered military leader" by the Washington Post.

Houck said the Media Research Center has found that there are far more examples of media outlets throwing in the words 'far-right' or 'conservative' to describe someone, like supreme court justices for example, than they do for people in a story who are 'far-left' or 'progressive.' He added that the liberal media will also typically use the terms 'reproductive rights' or 'reproductive freedom' and refrain from saying 'pro-life' when discussing the topic of abortion.

"We also found that over the summer during the campus protests in support of Hamas, not once were the protesters ever identified as pro-Hamas," he said, stating a study that they did on the protests on college campuses.

NewsBusters has studied the way media outlets on TV, radio, websites and social media report on these things for a long time. They have a tag called "labeling" dedicated to their studies and how outlets use their wording carefully to report on terrorists versus Republicans and Conservatives.

"What we see with how the media give reference, for a lack of a better term, to Islamic terrorists, is very one of the oldest tricks in the book," Houck said. "It's one of those forms of bias that is easy to spot."