The 5 Rules of Media Collusion: Decoding Legacy Media’s Reluctance to Confront Islamic Terrorism

• Mainstream media outlets routinely delay or obscure the identification of terrorists when the perpetrators are Muslim, despite decades of Islamist violence.
• This linguistic evasion, from “airplanes took aim” on 9/11 to softened headlines and withheld identities, reflects a systemic editorial pattern rather than isolated errors.
• Media narratives often deflect blame, highlight Muslim “good Samaritans,” or redirect suspicion toward Hindus, whites, or Jews.
• Such practices amount to an ideological reflex aimed at insulating Islam from its violent adherents, undermining journalistic integrity and public trust.
• Media obfuscation is not just dishonest but dangerous, emboldening extremists while denying the public timely, actionable information during moments of real fear.

In the ritual dance that follows every terrorist attack across the planet, one notices a peculiar hesitation among certain mainstream outlets — particularly those of a ‘progressive’ bent — to name the perpetrator promptly if he happens to belong to the Islamic faith. This reluctance persists despite decades of Islamist violence that have left countless victims worldwide. It has, at times, grown so pronounced that, on the eighteenth anniversary of 9/11, The New York Times briefly informed its readers that “airplanes took aim” at the Twin Towers, as if the Boeing 767s had acted with autonomous malice, rather than being deliberately flown into the buildings by 19 al-Qaeda hijackers. [1] Unfortunately, such semantic subterfuge only plays into the hands of Islamists like Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who dismissed the cataclysmic events of 9/11 and the nearly 3,000 deaths as “some people did something.” [2]

Such linguistic gymnastics are not isolated. They reflect a broader pattern across U.S.-based outlets such as The Washington Post, CNN, and, through its American operations, the BBC, a pattern mirrored in leading Indian newspapers, including The Hindu, The Times of India, and The Indian Express, where caution often slips into evasion when reporting on jihadist violence. When Yakub Memon, convicted for his role in the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257, was executed, The Indian Express led with the somber headline, “And they hanged Yakub Memon,” words that evoked sympathy more readily than condemnation. [3]

Most recently, after two Muslim terrorists attacked a Hanukkah gathering at Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach, killing 16 people, mostly Jewish, and injuring over 30, for a very long time, the mainstream media. Most recently, after two Muslim terrorists attacked a Hanukkah gathering at Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach, killing 16 people, most of them Jewish, and injuring more than 30 others, mainstream media outlets deliberately withheld the identities of the attackers for a long time. It was only when social media stepped in and keeping the truth under a veil became untenable that the attackers were identified as a father–son duo, Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24.

This pattern amounts to an ideological reflex: a desire to insulate Islam from association with its most violent adherents, even at the expense of clarity. The mainstream media’s collusion with Islamists violates the basic purpose of journalism, substituting evasion for honesty and leaving the public less informed as a result. It is also dangerous because it emboldens one side, fostering the belief that it can quite literally get away with murder and mayhem.

Against this backdrop, here are five rules to help decode the nature and causes of the legacy media’s nexus with radical Islam.

The First Rule of Media Collusion

The longer it takes the media to identify the terrorists after an attack, the greater the likelihood that the perpetrators are Muslim.

This is the default setting and the media’s standard operating procedure during terror attacks. The Paris attack, in which a radicalized Muslim policeman killed four of his colleagues and seriously injured two more, was marked by the reluctance of the mainstream media to disclose the identity of the perpetrator. The media’s line for many hours was that the assailant was a “civil servant.” It was much later, after the facts were being laid out on social media, that his identity as a Muslim convert was published. [4]

The Second Rule of Media Collusion

Following an Islamic terrorist attack, the media will desperately seek out a Muslim Samaritan to deflect attention away from the Islamic identity of the terrorists.

After the Bondi Beach terror attack, when it was no longer feasible to suppress the Islamic identities of the perpetrators, Sajid Akram and Naveed Akram, the media latched on to the fact that an Arab man, Ahmed al Ahmed, had managed to tackle and disarm Naveed Akram. [5] Al Ahmed, whose refugee parents had just arrived from Syria, risked his life and undoubtedly saved lives. For the media and liberal commentators, however, his heroism became a convenient pivot to their familiar refrain: not all Muslims are terrorists. This kind of media spin is disingenuous because it shifts attention away from an uncomfortable reality: a disproportionate share of contemporary terrorist violence has been carried out in the name of Islamist ideology.

The Third Rule of Media Collusion

Guilt will be deflected from Muslims and, if possible, pinned on any easy target – Hindu, White person or Jew.

In April 2013, when the FBI was looking for the Boston Marathon bombers, Sunil Tripathi, an Indian American student who was prone to depression, was erroneously believed to be a suspect because of fake news spun by Reddit and spread by several US media outlets. [6] When author Taslima Nasreen (who had sought asylum in Hindu-majority India to escape jihadists in her native Bangladesh) learnt about the possibility that the bomber might be a Hindu, she tweeted that she was dancing in happiness. Tripathi had been missing for a month by the time of the attack. His body was found after the actual bombing suspects (two Chechen Muslim brothers) had been officially identified.

The day after the bombings, Salon columnist David Sirota wrote, “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American.” He argued this would be preferable because White terrorists are perceived as “lone wolves,” and their identification does not lead to the collective blaming of groups, resulting in systemic and usually regrettable excessive responses such as wars, foreign policy shifts, crackdowns on immigration or reductions in civil liberties. [7]

In November 2008, 10 Pakistani terrorists raided the city of Mumbai, killing 166 people and bringing India’s financial capital to a standstill for three days. Despite clear and irrefutable evidence of these terrorists being from Pakistan, Congress party leader Digvijay Singh, Hindi filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt and some journalists attempted to tar Hindus by pinning the blame on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). One of these journalists was Aziz Burney, the editor of the Urdu Sahara newspaper, who wrote a book titled ‘26/11 RSS Ki Saazish’ (26/11 An RSS Conspiracy). Speaking at the book launch – appropriately at Mumbai’s Islamic Gymkhana – Digvijay Singh said that entire areas of “Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, parts of Maharashtra and Karnataka…have become a bastion of majority terrorism.” [8]

The Fourth Rule of Media Collusion

If the terrorist or criminal is a convert from Hinduism, Christianity, or Judaism, he will be identified by his former name now and forever.

On June 15, 2004, the Ahmedabad Police carried out an anti-terror operation during which they shot dead four terrorists – Ishrat Jahan Raza, Amjad Ali Rana, Zeeshan Johar, and Javed Ghulam Sheikh. All of them were affiliated with the Pakistan-based terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba and were planning to assassinate Narendra Modi, who was the Chief Minister of Gujarat at that time. Sheikh was the son of a Hindu, Gopinath Pillai, from Kerala. Born Pranesh Pillai, he converted to Islam and changed his name in 1991 to Javed Sheikh to marry a Muslim woman called Sajida. To perpetuate the lie that “terror has no religion,” the media never referred to him by his new Muslim name but continued to identify him as Pranesh Pillai.

More than a decade later, when Sheikh’s father was removed from the post of treasurer of the Nair Service Society for abusing the Hindu community, a Times of India Group newspaper described Sheikh as “Gujarat encounter victim,” thus blatantly presenting a terrorist as the victim. [9]

The Fifth Rule of Media Collusion

In India, during investigations, when police are trying to ascertain the identity of a terrorist or criminal, they generally give the perpetrator a Hindu moniker. Later, if it is known he is Muslim, the media will ignore the fact and continue to name him by the old Hindu name.

In the Jyoti Singh rape and murder case of 2012, the most barbaric of the five rapists was hastily declared a juvenile because he claimed to be 17 years old, although he lacked a birth certificate. The Delhi Police gave him the nickname ‘Raju’, and that was how he was known for years. It was only after social media activists outed him as Mohammed Afroz that his true identity became public. [10]

Years after the crime, many media outlets continue to whitewash his identity, and even tried to portray the monster as an innocent and shy young man. [11]

Again, post the Bondi Beach massacre, while the mainstream media was pussyfooting around the identity of the attacker, it was British anti-Islamist activist and author Tommy Robinson and others like Dutch politician Geert Wilders who were among the first to reveal the truth. [12]

People Have a Right to Know

Terror attacks by Muslims – against both non-Muslims and truly peaceful Muslims – are on the increase globally. It is, therefore, natural for people to panic when they learn of a terrorist strike. Unfortunately, at such a vulnerable moment in their lives, when ordinary people are concerned about the safety of their children or other family members who may be in the general area, the media goes into politically correct mode and withholds crucial information from the public.

People have the right to know the political affiliation or religion of the terrorists because this information allows them to take appropriate action. For instance, if the terrorists are identified as belonging to the Islamic faith, people can stay away from Muslim dominated areas where copycat attackers may be scouting the neighborhood looking for an easy target. If the terrorists have bombed a church or temple, people can stay away from such places. Based on information from the media, they can watch out for suspicious characters who may be planning to knife random passersby. Similarly, if the shooter is a teen on a school rampage, then people may want to avoid school zones.

The left’s argument that revealing the identity of terrorists could make ordinary Muslims vulnerable to retaliatory attacks is specious. Hindus, Buddhists and Westerners don’t go around beating or lynching Muslims. For instance, barring a couple of attacks by rednecks, Americans did not go after Muslims after 19 Muslims killed nearly 3,000 New Yorkers in the coordinated 9/11 terror attacks. In fact, so assured are American Muslims of their own safety that they (callously and defiantly) tried to build a mosque, known as the Ground Zero Mosque, near the site of the Twin Towers in New York. [13]

Media Silence on Muslim Attacks on Non-Muslims

On the other hand, the opposite is true. Ordinary Muslims around the world are easily provoked to attack non-Muslims in response to the incidents where Muslims are the victims. On March 18, 2019, Gokmen Tanis fired at commuters and killed three people at a tram station in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The Turkish refugee said he was seeking revenge for the massacre of Muslims in New Zealand just three days earlier. Essentially, he was prepared to kill the people of the very country that had given him refugee status so he could start a truly peaceful life away from Yozgat, one of Turkey’s most dangerous provinces. [14]

Similarly, the slaughter of more than 300 Christians in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday was the handiwork of wealthy Sri Lankan Muslims who declared that the coordinated church bombings were in retaliation for the New Zealand massacre. [15]

In 1992, hours after a disputed mosque was demolished in Ayodhya, ordinary Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh attacked and burned Hindu temples. More than 120 temples were destroyed across Pakistan. [16] In Lahore, thousands of people accompanied a bulldozer in demolishing a Hindu temple. Crowds set fire to six other temples and stormed the office of Air India. Not only Hindu temples but also several churches were destroyed.

At such times, the mainstream media has no reservations or fears about the safety of non-Muslims. In fact, their feeding frenzy is such that they routinely use words such as “Hindu extremists” [17][17] and seem to be deliberately provoking attacks on Hindus.

Very rarely do victims get to confront the media. Victoria Teplitsky, daughter of a victim wounded at the Hanukkah event on Bondi Beach, appeared on ABC News Breakfast. Her father, an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor, was shot in the leg. Teplitsky directly confronted the hosts, demanding the ABC “cut out the biased reporting” on Israel, arguing it had contributed to rising antisemitism and isolation of Jewish Australians since October 7, 2023. [18]

Such accusations highlight broader concerns of media bias. Former AP correspondent Matti Friedman has documented how international coverage often magnifies Israel’s actions while downplaying threats from groups like Hamas, applying double standards not seen in other conflicts. [19]

Media watchdogs like Honest Reporting cite patterns of selective omission and demonization fueling antisemitism. According to its report[20]:

• The terrorist attack that targeted the Australian Jewish community did not occur in isolation. It was the culmination of years of antisemitic hatred.
• The news coverage of the attack primarily focused on the perpetrators rather than the victims, softening the crime.
• By refusing to name antisemitism and terrorism, major outlets contributed to a moral inversion by obscuring the targeted nature of the violence and reinforcing the very conditions that allow antisemitic attacks to recur.

These imbalances, amid surging global Jew-hatred post-October 7, 2023, underscore how skewed narratives can exacerbate real-world harm to Jewish people and indeed other non-Muslim groups.

Conclusion

It used to be that everyone’s first point of news was the mainstream media. That’s no longer the case as the mainstream media outlets worldwide are brazenly sympathising with terrorists rather than being concerned for the victims of Islamic terrorism. People are so fed up with the silence of the hacks that they no longer listen to their mindless drivel dished out by mainstream media outlets.

When unsympathetic anchors and asinine analysts try to obfuscate the news – when clearly all hell is breaking loose – people get angry. They turn to alternate sources that provide raw news without lensing it through the prism of political correctness. That’s why most people today rarely visit the BBC or CNN for breaking news; they turn to social media first.

Citations

[1] New York Times Deletes Tweet Saying “Airplanes Took Aim” at Towers on 9/11. New York Post, September 11, 2019. https://nypost.com/2019/09/11/new-york-times-deletes-tweet-saying-airplanes-took-aim-at-towers-on-9-11/

[2] 9/11 Anniversary Mourner Who Lost Mother Criticizes Ilhan Omar’s “Some People Did Something” Comment. Fox News, September 11, 2019. https://www.foxnews.com/us/9-11-anniversary-mourner-who-lost-mother-in-attacks-criticizes-ilhan-omars-some-people-did-something-comment

[3] 1993 Serial Blasts Convict Executed: They Hanged Yakub Memon. The Indian Express, July 30, 2015. https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/1993-serial-blasts-convict-executed-and-they-hanged-yakub-memon/

[4] 4 People Killed by Knife-Wielding Attacker at Paris Police Headquarters. NPR, October 3, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/10/03/766770627/4-people-killed-by-knife-wielding-attacker-at-paris-police-headquarters

[5] Bondi Beach Attack: Bystander Hero Recounts Chaos After Hanukkah Gathering Shooting. CNN, December 15, 2025. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/15/australia/bondi-beach-shooting-bystander-hero-intl-hnk

[6] Sunil Tripathi: A Hindu Man Wrongly Accused After the Boston Marathon Bombing. Reddit, r/IndiaSpeaks. https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaSpeaks/comments/y4lb9x/sunil_tripathi_a_hindu_man_was_wrongly/

[7] Greenwald, Glenn. Let’s Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber Is a White American. Salon, April 16, 2013. http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/lets_hope_the_boston_marathon_bomber_is_a_white_american/

[8] 26/11: Digvijaya Singh Flags It Off Again, This Time in Mumbai. The Indian Express, November 30, 2008. https://indianexpress.com/article/news-archive/web/rss-26-11-digvijaya-flags-it-off-again-this-time-in-mumbai/

[9] Narendra Modi Critic Gopinatha Pillai Removed from Nair Community Outfit. The Economic Times, January 7, 2014. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/narendra-modi-critic-gopinatha-pillai-removed-from-nair-community-outfit/articleshow/28736886.cms

[10] Profile: Mohammed Afroz. TheyWillKillYou.com. https://theywillkillyou.com/profile/mohammed-afroz

[11] Delhi Gangrape Case: Juvenile Takes Up Painting in Reform Home. Firstpost, January 18, 2014. https://www.firstpost.com/living/delhi-gangrape-case-juvenile-takes-paintings-reform-home-1693043.html

[12] Robinson, Tommy. Post on Media Response to the Bondi Attack. X (formerly Twitter), December 2025. https://x.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/2000497742376808448

[13] Park51. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park51

[14] Who Is Gokmen Tanis? Utrecht Shooting Suspect Arrested After Killing Three. International Business Times, March 18, 2019. https://www.ibtimes.com/who-gokmen-tanis-utrecht-netherlands-shooting-suspect-arrested-after-killing-3-2776858

[15] Sri Lanka: ISIL Mastermind Behind Easter Sunday Bombings. Al Jazeera, October 5, 2021. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/5/sri-lanka-isil-mastermind-easter-sunday-bombings

[16] Hindus. Minority Rights Group International. https://minorityrights.org/communities/hindus-2/

[17] Pakistan’s Disappearing Temples and Churches. Deutsche Welle, November 27, 2012. https://www.dw.com/en/pakistans-disappearing-temples-and-churches/a-16424654

[18] Bondi Attack Victim’s Daughter Slams ABC Media Bias, Politicians. Daily Caller, December 16, 2025. https://dailycaller.com/2025/12/16/bondi-attack-victim-daughter-victoria-teplitsky-slams-abc-media-bias-politicians/

[19] Journalist Matti Friedman Exposes Media Bias Against Israel. American Jewish Committee, podcast. https://www.ajc.org/news/podcast/journalist-matti-friedman-exposes-media-bias-against-israel

[20] Years of Ignored Antisemitism Led to Terror in Australia—and the Media Helped Normalize It. HonestReporting. https://honestreporting.com/years-of-ignored-antisemitism-led-to-terror-in-australia-and-the-media-helped-normalize-it/