Donald Trump would have us believe that terrorism is the exclusive province of muslims. That is why his only move to stop terrorism is to ban muslims from entering the United States. The truth is that Americans are much more likely to be the victims of terrorists that are home-grown non-muslims (such as white supremacists, KKK, or nazis). In fact, between 2008 and 2016 twice as many terrorist acts were committed by white and right-wing terrorists than by muslim terrorists.
How has Trump been able to so easily get away with this lie? The American news media must accept the blame for a large part of that. As the graphic above shows, terrorist acts by a muslim receive a lot more news coverage than terrorist acts by a non-muslim (105 headlines to 15 headlines). That's according to new research from the University of Alabama, which will be in a future edition of Justice Quarterly.
If the public reads or watches a lot in the media about muslim terrorists, and very little about other terrorists, it is easy for them to think (wrongly) that most terrorism comes from muslims.
The media needs to do a much better job.
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