And now, a word from the cinematic classic Masked and Anonymous:
Editor: So, are you still a journalist or a novelist?
Tom Friend: Same thing out here….
Editor: Make something out of it. And if you can’t do that, sir, then make it up!
Yesterday the journalist/novelist Michael Kruse of the St. Petersburg Times, who is very good at making things up, said this about me:
Robert Spencer, who writes on a blog called Jihad Watch, told reporters Islam was here to take over America.
In response, I pointed this out here:
Kruse didn’t think it necessary to note that when I said that “Islam wasn’t here to worship and get along but rather to become the dominant religion in America,” I was referring to a statement of Omar Ahmad, cofounder and longtime board chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, of which Mohammad Lutfi called himself an “honor member” (video coming soon). I attributed this statement to Ahmad. But by phrasing his report this way, as I am sure Kruse was aware, he made me sound like a nut, whereas if he had noted that it was a quote from the cofounder of CAIR, indicating that there are Muslims in America who say this sort of thing, his story would have taken on a substantially different cast.
When I wrote that, I had not yet watched the video above (which comes to us from Pamela at Atlas Shrugs, who has more videos and coverage of the September 3 Rifqa hearing).
You will see in this video that I refer to the statement by Omar Ahmad about Islam becoming dominant in the United States and the Koran being the only law in this country, and mention Omar Ahmad by name and identify who he is — and all the while standing to my immediate left is none other than…Michael Kruse of the St. Petersburg Times. He is the one in the blue shirt with Seventies-style hair and a beard, taking notes with a blue pen.
So here it is on video: Michael Kruse was right there, he heard me attribute the statement properly, and then he made the decision to strip out the attribution and characterize the statement as if it were an out-of-the-blue assertion from a paranoid blogger.
That’s what they call “journalism” these days!