The film ‘Innocence of Muslims’ and the dangerous failing of the media
“100 Jewish donors.” Google it, and 17,000 results follow; 1,490 just in Google’s “News” tab. Strung together, those words sound altruistic. But place those words in the context of the attacks taking place against the United States embassies, and the foundations are built for a grandiose conspiracy. Place them still further in the context of a $5 million hate film, and that controversy becomes more elaborate, playing on classic tropes of Jewish control over Hollywood. What I am saying is words and context matter, which is why all those media outlets—and they were many—that reported that Jews were behind the hate film, The Innocence of Muslims, should be so embarrassed.
It all began when the Wall Street Journal and Associated Press published notes from an interview with Sam Bacile, then thought to be the producer behind the film that is said to have been the catalyst for the riots at U.S. embassies in Cairo, Tunisia, Yemen, Iran, and even Israel. Bacile told both the AP and the WSJ that he was an Israeli-American and that he raised $5 million from “100 Jewish donors” for the film.
Both the WSJ and AP, in an exercise of stenographic journalism, dutifully published those two details about Bacile’s nationality and his donors’ religions, all without knowing whether Sam Bacile was the individual’s real name or whether he had actually produced the film. In fact, it took the Wall Street Journal an entire day after publishing these details to conduct a records search on whether the name Sam Bacile was even real. (That records search turned up no references to any men in the United States by that name.) By that time, there were already 17,000 Google search results. The other U.S. newspaper giants—the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today—all parroted these details, as did the large city-specific ones.
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/112248/beware-of-even-numbers
The fact that he claimed there were exactly 100 Jewish donors should have been a HUGE red flag for the WSJ and AP. They both did a horrible job as the "first reporters" and should be ashamed.