It would have been a dangerous drinking game during the Biden presidency to chug every time the media broadly described Jan. 6 protesters as "insurrectionists." It didn't matter whether the protesters were violent or vocally supported overthrowing the government. That was the automatic journalistic assumption for every protester on the scene.
So it's remarkable when you consider the case of radical leftist Mahmoud Khalil and the group he led, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD). On March 10, the network evening news shows didn't find an "insurrectionist." They came rushing to his defense.
The Trump administration pulled Khalil's green card for his support for Hamas terrorism. Everything President Donald Trump does is reflexively opposed as unjust.
NBC's Emilie Ikeda was vague: "Khalil recently finished a masters at Columbia and helped lead pro-Palestinian protests on campus."
ABC's Aaron Katersky also said: "As a Columbia University graduate student, Khalil helped lead pro-Palestinian protests and organized encampments that took over the campus for weeks last spring." Reporters pointed out his new American wife was pregnant, so Trump seems meaner.
CBS reporter Lilia Luciano editorialized: "You could feel the chill in the air which really matched the chill in terms of freedom of expression." CBS never found anything "chilling" in prosecuting nonviolent grandmas for "parading" in the Capitol.
"PBS News Hour" correspondent William Brangham read from a Trump message on Truth Social that Khalil is "a radical foreign pro-Hamas student" who "engaged in 'pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.' Now, as I said, the administration has not provided any details alleging that he has said or done any of those things. We simply at this point do not know." They played dumb.
The New York Times on March 11 turned to Khalil's friends, who were "describing him as kind, expressive and gentle." That's dramatically at odds with the Times reporting on CUAD on Oct. 9, 2024. They reported CUAD issued a statement calling the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of innocent civilians a "moral, military and political victory" and quoting Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated former political leader of Hamas.
"The Palestinian resistance is moving their struggle to a new phase of escalation and it is our duty to meet them there," the group wrote on Oct. 7 on Telegram. Earth to Media: They're pro-Hamas.
The Times noted CUAD rescinded an apology it made after one of its members said the school was lucky he wasn't out killing Zionists. "We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance," they said.
Khalil has been routinely described as the "lead negotiator" for CUAD, but the "no evidence" gang at PBS somehow thinks you can't connect the dots between Khalil and CUAD. We can guess PBS reads and respects The New York Times, so they can't call this story "disinformation."
PBS pretends you can't find anything "anti-American" in CUAD's output. So it's embarrassing to note CUAD posted on social media, "We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization." They suggest oppressed territories of the world including Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico.
The New York Post reported Khalil was caught on camera at last week's hostile takeover of the Milstein Library at Barnard College: "Videos and photographs posted on X depict him holding a bullhorn near the library entrance and engaged in discussion with school administrators."
Reasonable people can debate whether it is fair and reasonable to pull Khalil's green card and send him packing. But reasonable people should admit the reality that Khalil is an "insurrectionist." He is a "radical" and an "extremist." He embraces the murder of innocent civilians in the pursuit of "liberation." He's not a kinder, gentler protester.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.