A Lesson In ‘Journalism’ With Ansar and Werleman
You can learn a lot about a person’s agenda and objectivity by how willing they are to share unfavourable claims about their ideological opponents without scrutinising them first.
It’s been a fun day today on that platform of common sense, Twitter.
First we had CJ Werleman share this video with the below claim in service of his on-going mission to demonise all that is Israel.
What he fails to tell you however, is that not only is the footage from 2008, but the Palestinian detainee was shot with a rubber bullet, in the foot. Hardly desirable behaviour I’ll grant you – but it paints a slightly different picture than the one presented by Werleman. As a side note, the soldier responsible was arrested and convicted for his actions – by Israeli authorities.
Hilariously, when questioned about the context and specifics of the clip, CJ confirmed that he hadn’t even bothered to find out. He calls himself a journalist.
Cast your mind back to the time Werleman shared a similar video which he claimed to show ‘Israeli soldiers beating and torturing Palestinian detainees in occupied West Bank’.
Unfortunately for Werleman the soldiers were not Israeli. The detainees were not Palestinian. This wasn’t even the West Bank. This was footage of the Guatemalan army mistreating civilians. It seems nothing has been learned since this humiliating episode.
This brings me to the below meme circulating of a Sam Harris ‘quote’.
Of course, Sam Harris has never said anything like this. It’s entirely fabricated and I would imagine that the creator of the meme knows so too. Depressingly, Harris is no stranger to having his views distorted or just plain invented for him. He has addressed this type of behaviour here.
What’s interesting however is taking note of the people who are willing to amplify this false ‘quote’ without even checking it first and especially how they spin it in service of their own unhealthy obsessions.
Some of you may be familiar with Ashgar Bukhari, founder of the soft-Islamist group the Muslim Public Affairs Committee. He’s the gentleman who claimed that ‘Zionists’ had stole his shoe.
Bukhari shared the Harris meme, spinning it through the prism of his own pet obsession, ‘the Jews’.
Mo Ansar was up next to make a fool of himself. Again. Ansar also refers to himself as a ‘journalist’.
Since Bukhari had already covered ‘the Jews’, it was left to Mo to bizarrely link it to the Quilliam Foundation. This on-going hatred of anti extremist Quilliam and its founder Maajid Nawaz stems purely from the time Nawaz exposed Ansar on national TV. Questioned by Nawaz on whether it was acceptable to remove limbs for theft in an Islamic State, Ansar couldn’t muster the moral clarity to say “no”:
Ansar never quite recovered from this public humiliation and hasn’t been featured on mainstream media for quite some time. Instead he currently shills for Putin’s propaganda machine ‘Russia Today’.
But how did ‘journalist’ Mo Ansar confirm the authenticity of this ‘quote’?
That’s right – someone said they heard him say it. Good enough for this ‘journalist’.
Under increasing pressure to retract the dangerous and fabricated quote, Ansar then doubled down:
We are now told that Harris was alleged to have made these comments at the ‘Beyond Belief 2014 Conference’ and a tweeter is then chastised for not checking the footage of the conference for themselves before doubting Ansar:
Which is interesting. Had Ansar even bothered to check the details, he would have discovered that Harris attended no such event in 2014. ‘Critical thought, much’? indeed.
Just for tweeting about this embarrassing episode, I was added to the long list of people Ansar claims to have reported to the police for ‘anti-Muslim harassment’:
I’m no more guilty of ‘anti-Muslim harassment’ than I am of being a ‘paranoid racist’, as he has previously claimed. These are the bullying cries of a malicious and exposed liar. Ansar being a Muslim is the least interesting thing about him. His dangerous lies however, should be countered at every turn.
He also issued similar threats to anyone who shared this expose on him from Private Eye magazine – so definitely don’t tweet that out whatever you do.
Such is Mo Ansar’s narcissism, that he will be unable to concede that what he has done here is not only unethical, poor ‘journalism’ – but dangerous too. He’s already detracting attention by describing the push back as ‘atheist Islamophobia’ and smearing Harris further.
How many people will come away from this episode with half a story, secure in the perception that Sam Harris has called for the genocide of Muslims? He should retract and offer an apology immediately. But he won’t. That course of action is reserved for those with intelligence and integrity.
Stephen Knight is host of The #GSPodcast. You can listen to The Godless Spellchecker Podcast here, and support it by becoming a patron here.
I agree with everything said here, apart from one bit.
While the “When Tommy Met Mo” sit-down with Nawaz certainly damaged him, he did carry on with mainstream media.
That was one of the frustrations as to when they (BBC, LBC, Channel4, SKY, Channel5) would wake up.
I believe the nail in the coffin came later with the expose that he had reported Iain Dale (a media presenter) to the police for nothing. I think that made all mainstream media drop him.
I’m thinking back a bit here, but I do think his demise was ultimately self-inflicted, when it should have come sooner.
Yes, you’re right. I’ll make a minor edit
I didn’t think CJ Werleman, Mo Ansar and the others (notice how these creepers all follow and hang around each other like fleas?) could sink any lower and display such a blatant disregard to truth. I was wrong.
It never ceases to amaze me how the people who say extremism is caused by prejudice against Muslims, are the first to invent fictitious prejudice against Muslims.
“No Jews can be trusted because they all love death more than they love family so we should just nuke Israel.” -Simultaneously said by Glenn Greenwald and CJ Werleman, as heard from a source who attended a conference that may or may not have occurred.
Oh my, why would they say such things??
Perfect 😀
It was bad enough when they were quoting Sam out of context, but this is truly beyond the pale. I guess it’s an indication, though, of how rattled Sam’s got them; otherwise they wouldn’t resort to outright lies like this because it could so easily backfire on them.
The first law of modern journalism (and social media posts and political campaigns) is “Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story (or tweet or wall post or sound byte).”
Pingback: The Godless Spellchecker finds false memes about Israel and Sam Harris « Why Evolution Is True
It’s remarkably easy to defame people.
“The holocaust was a good idea.”
-Sam Harris
Christopher Hitchens was alleged to have said a very similar thing, also, allegedly at a conference, that someone had heard from someone who had heard, from someone…..etc. That one was comprehensivilly debunked in due course. It was spun by that leftie nutter academic, whose name escapes me at the moment.
I wonder if this is a replay of that nonsense, just with Sam as the target this time round.
I remember it well, I was the one who debunked it
https://www.gspellchecker.com/2016/01/christopher-hitchens-and-that-dubious-iran-quote/
Good on you Stephen for exposing this!
Mo Ansar is a charlatan and is a bit dim from I can guess from his interactions with me. I was on the BBC in the UK, debating burkas (I am against banning) but said that they are worn either to wind up IslamoSc(k)eptics or because the local Imam says so. I got the impression he was intimidated by me, not only in the debate but in reality too.
The person in the Tweet is Nicky Campbell, who is a nationally known BBC presenter. Campbell had sent him a private message over Twitter and the scumbag put it in the public domain. So ever since I have put it to Ansar on 5 occasions does your wife only speak when you give her permission. He has refused to answer the question every time. Then he blocked me.
https://twitter.com/search?q=any%20comments%20from:moansar%20since:2014-04-10%20until:2014-04-18&src=typd