Left-Wing Media Bias in Norway

I’ve decided to write this essay in order to try and shed some light on the media response in the wake of the terrorist attack in Oslo. I will compare this response to that following similar terrorist attacks carried out by radical Muslims, and will try to highlight the disparity in the way the media are reporting these incidents. Many individuals in the conservative community in Norway have claimed that they have been treated unfairly by the media in the aftermath of these attacks, and unfortunately they have a valid point.

I will also look at the way certain political parties and organisations in Norway, including AUF, view organisations that engage in terrorist activities. In addition I will be taking a closer look at the Muslim community in Norway, and give some examples that raise serious doubts about the MSM claim that this community strives to embrace Western values. I will provide examples that show that certain members of this community pose a serious threat to Norwegian society.

The terrorist attacks in Norway are unique in several ways:

• They are unique because they were carried out by an ethnic Norwegian male with right-wing views, and not a radical Muslim, which has been the case in almost every major terrorist attack in the last few decades.
• They were also unique because many of the victims at Utøya who were massacred by the crazed gunman were members of an organisation which has on several occasions expressed sympathy, to varying degrees, for terrorist organisations abroad, particularly the PLO and Hamas.
• The terrorist’s attacks are unique because of the unrestrained media response following the attacks. In the past, whenever radical Islamists have been behind such attacks, the media have attempted to shield Muslims and have discouraged people from blaming Islam. In fact, the MSM have never hinted that the Muslim community in Norway; or elsewhere for that matter ever have had any culpability in any Muslim terrorist attacks. The Media have gone out of their way to persuade the public that such comparisons are unfair and baseless. Later in this essay I will give examples that prove this.

In this incident, however, where the perpetrator is a non-Muslim with extremist right-wing views, the entire conservative community in Norway have been implicated by certain political commentators and the MSM. Conservative, anti-Islam blogs and individuals that have expressed critical views of Islam have been vilified and indirectly accused of ‘emotionally’ contributing to the attacks. The media’s main argument is that these groups have somehow inspired Anders Behring Breivik to resort to violence by means of fervent rhetoric against the Muslim community and the political establishment.

Just a few days after the attacks, Norwegian political commentator, Petter Nome wrote an open letter for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo in which he placed a significant part of the blame for the terrorist attacks on the Progress Party (FrP), whose only crime is that they have been highly critical of the Norwegian asylum and immigration policies, and voiced their concerns about the rapid growth of Islam in Norway (verbatim quote):

To You who Nourished the Killer

By Petter Nome, Oslo

The Norwegian Progressive Party is the second largest party in Norway, holding 41 out of 169 seats in the Parliament. Their leader, Ms Siv Jensen, claims she was shocked when Mr. Breivik turned out to be one of their former members. She certainly was, and her tears were falling. But did she ever carry one single brick to the bridge most of us are trying to build between people and cultures? She never did. Did she ever try to make electoral catches with her talk about “Islamisation” and “national” and “Christian” values? She did, almost every day.

Ms. Jensen is not a supporter of violence. Neither are most of her colleagues in populist and right wing parties in Europe. But they should not be left with their shock and swollen faces. They carry profound responsibility for actively creating a climate where hate and violence appear as options for their most impatient followers.

In this letter Petter Nome claims that the rhetoric used by the Progress Party, and in particular by its leader Siv Jensen, has somehow created an atmosphere in which Anders Behring Breivik felt justified in committing these atrocities. Mr Nome arrived at these conclusions only days after Breivik carried out the attacks, and without ever having met Breivik in person. Mr Nome justifies his accusations with the fact that Siv Jensen has used the terms ‘Islamisation’, ‘national’ and ‘Christian values’ in speeches and in interviews.

It’s not unreasonable to argue that most people would have a hard time understanding Mr Nome’s train of thought in this case. How can anyone construe the use of such terms as justification to go out and kill 77 innocent people?

Of course, Nome and his cohorts know deep down that the Progress Party has no blame in this tragedy. The massive blitz against the conservative community carried out by the Left is nothing but a massive smear campaign aimed at discrediting political parties and commentators on the right that have opposing views. It is designed to intimidate others from voicing similar opinions in the future. If Nome had been sincere in his criticism of the Progress Party, he would have had expressed similar criticism of the Muslim community in Norway whenever Islamic radicals carry out terrorist attacks. But whenever Islamic terrorists massacre innocent people, Mr Nome and his allies choose to remain silent, and the only statements they make are meant to deflect any suspicion away from the Muslim community.

In his eagerness to ‘crucify’ the Progress Party, Mr Nome also seems to have forgotten that Breivik didn’t target Muslims, but rather the Labour Party and its youth wing, the AUF. Mr Nome also seems to have forgotten that the Progress Party didn’t use the aforementioned terms to describe members of the AUF or the Labour Party, but they used them to describe the increasing power of radical Muslims, and the unwillingness among certain Muslims to integrate into Norwegian society.

When the news of Mr Nome’s infamous letter finally reached the Norwegian media, it was heavily criticised by several political commentators for its viciousness, and even the Foreign Minister, Jonas Gahr Store, criticised it in harsh words, labelling it a cheap attempt to score political points in the wake of the terrorist attack. Mr. Gahr Store also went on record saying that the only one who could be held accountable for the massacre was Breivik himself.

But Mr Nome wasn’t the only one viciously attacking the Progress Party. Several others joined him in the verbal Progress Party bashing. Professor of Medicine Per Fugelli wrote an equally vile opinion piece in Dagbladet on August 5, 2011:

For a medical practitioner, it is natural to think about prevention. When something terrible happens, we need to understand what’s causing it. By finding the causes, we can prevent it from happening again. We will never find any logic in Anders Behring Breivik’s actions. They belong to madness. But we can try to understand the raw material and the fuel for his delusions. He did not develop his madness in an empty room. For nine years he nourished his paranoia in a society where Islamophobia and hatred of Muslims have become commonplace. Step by step this country has created a negative stereotype of Muslims. They are not people with a religion. They are merely standardised clones of their religion. There is an underworld of racist garbage on the internet. But the vilification of Muslims also takes place in the public debate. The Progress Party has for years brought shame and suspicion upon Muslims.

Again we see the eagerness to equate political opposition to Islam and immigration as an encouragement to incite violence, which is of course completely ludicrous. In their letters both Mr Nome and Mr Fugelli go a long way towards blaming the Progress Party for these attacks, even though the Progress Party have never advocated violence, nor in any way shape or form tried to convey that this is somehow a legitimate way of dealing with political opponents. If a member of the Progress Party had expressed such opinions, he or she would have swiftly been suspended from the party.

In fact, in recent decades the only political groups in Norway that have advocated violence — and on several occasions resorted to violence — are the Left. This has been done in order to silence the Progress Party and individuals who don’t subscribe to the Left’s political agenda. The Progress Party and its supporters have on several occasions been physically assaulted and had their meetings disrupted by radical leftists groups. It should also be pointed out that the Left have consistently used terms and characterisations of the Progress Party that are a lot worse than anything the Progress Party have used to characterise immigrants and members of the Muslim community. Does that mean that the Left are responsible for the physical attacks that were carried out against the members of the Progress Party in the past?

The Progress Party is popularly referred to in Norway as a ‘Protest Party’, meaning that it constantly criticises the policies of the ruling political parties, including immigration policies. There are very few people in Norway today who will claim that the immigration and asylum policies of the Labour Party have been a success. On the contrary, most people believe that these policies have been a complete failure. This is what the Progress Party have been pointing out, and nothing else. To even hint that such legitimate criticism could possibly be viewed as encouragement to undertake terrorist activities is repulsive, and it shows how low some people on the left are willing to sink to advance their own political agenda.

Per Fugelli is well known in Norway for his dislike of the Progress Party. Over the years he has written several opinion pieces demonising the party. I doubt very much that his outpouring of rage is something that has come about as a result of this terrorist attack. The rage that he expresses in this opinion piece has been lying dormant for a long time, and my guess is that Mr. Fugelli finally eyed an opportunity to pour out his guts with impunity and try to inflict damage to the Progress Party at the same time. And it’s not the only attack from Mr Fugelli on the Progress Party since the attacks. In an interview with Dagsavisen on July 26, 2011, he had the following to say:

The perpetrator’s thoughts have not been formed in an empty room. They have been formed in an environment of stereotypical imaging of the enemy. This is something that the Progress Party must take a great deal of responsibility for. Carl I. Hagen must take responsibility for having talked about the great Caliphate, and for having talked about an alleged Muslim plan for world domination. Muslims have been portrayed as sinister, dangerous individuals who are after our daughters. Ulf Erik Knudsen, Parliamentarian member of the Progress Party created the Facebook page, “We who do not want to be chauffeured by a Muslim taxi driver.” The Conservative Party have cooperated with the progress Party to get into government. The Conservative Party must be strong and say that as long as Progress Party exhibit these brown, xenophobic attitudes the Conservative Party will not be in a coalition government with them, Fugelli says.

Mr Fugelli seems oblivious to the fact that it is not the Progress Party, but the Labour Party that have created such an atmosphere by failing to rectify an out of control immigration policy which has resulted in a dramatic rise in crime and increased distrust in politicians and political parties. In fact, the Progress party has on numerous occasions pleaded with the Labour Party to do something about the problem, but unfortunately to no avail.

Another political commentator who found it expedient to blame the Progress Party and anti-Islamic websites such as Document.no was Lars Gule. Now the funny thing with Lars Gule is that he was actually arrested in Lebanon in the seventies for being in the possession of explosives that were supposed to be used in a terrorist attack against the Israeli military. Here we have a former would-be terrorist criticising honest law abiding conservative journalists of being instrumental in creating ‘Breivik the terrorist’. I wonder if Mr Gule is capable of seeing the irony in all of this, but then again he probably isn’t.

On August 1, 2011, Gule had the following to say to VG.Nett:

“It is obvious that certain groups and individuals have contributed to Breivik’s warped view of the world, and these individuals need to do some serious soul searching; if not, others will have to help them with this task. Because they have participated in creating an extreme worldview that influenced this person to perform such an extreme act,” says Gule.

Gule has debated members of the extreme right on various online discussion forums and is now urging the society to confront these ideologies.

But the MSM haven’t focused their energy on solely attacking political opponents. They have also reiterated their staunch support for the Muslim community, which they have described as peaceful and democratic ever since the attacks in Oslo took place. The MSM has also invested a lot of energy in ridiculing people who believe that Islam poses a threat to Norwegian society both culturally and demographically. Chairman of the Nobel Committee and former Labour Politician Thorbjørn Jagland said in an interview with the British newspaper The Observer on August 1, 2011 that:

European leaders should be careful when discussing immigration to prevent fuelling right-wing extremism. Leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Thorbjørn Jagland urges European leaders in an interview with the British newspaper The Observer to refrain from using right-wing arguments when debating Multiculturalism and immigration.

Jagland also urges European leaders to change their terminology and not talk about terrorism as an Islamic phenomenon.

“We need to stop using the term Islamic terrorism and instead use the term terrorism,” says Jagland.

Mr Jagland clearly feels that Islamic terrorism should be referred to as ‘terrorism’ and not ‘Islamic terrorism’, but on the other hand he has no qualms about warning European leaders not to use ‘extreme right-wing’ rhetoric. His views are in line with that of other dishonest politicians on the left who are more than willing to shamelessly label the latest attacks in Norway as ‘extreme right-wing terrorism’ and ‘extreme Christian terrorism’.

And of course the MSM plays an important role in this massive smear campaign. They are very eager to provide room for proponents of the multicultural ideology. These proponents are given free rein to spread their biased opinions and to attack members from the other side of the political spectrum. It is a concerted and vicious effort from the Norwegian MSM, which would never give individuals critical of Islam the same opportunities to express their views whenever Muslim militants carry out terrorist attacks. There are countless other examples of this extreme left-wing bias in the media, but for brevity’s sake I’ve omitted them from this essay.

Now that we’ve focused on the way the Norwegian MSM reacted to the Oslo attacks, let’s spend some time investigating the way the same media have reacted to similar Islamic terrorist attacks in the past. It will soon become clear that different rules apply whenever Islam is involved in such attacks. Gone is the willingness to challenge and question the doctrines behind the religion which are in fact actively encouraging its practitioners to attack non-believers, and which of course is the sole source in which the Islamic terrorists find justification for their evil actions.

Wouldn’t it perhaps be more appropriate for the MSM to actually discuss and shed light on those passages in the Koran and the verses in the hadith that actively encourage Muslims to fight the unbelievers? And wouldn’t it be appropriate to challenge the religious leadership that either encourages their practitioners to commit such acts or gives ambiguous responses to the same MSM whenever they are faced with questions regarding Islam and terrorism and the unwillingness of Islam to adopt Western values?

Another thing we’ll see in the MSM reporting of previous terrorist attacks is that the MSM don’t show the same respect to the victims of these terrorist attacks as they did in this latest incident in Oslo.

Let’s go back ten years to the event that once and for all put Islamic terror and jihad on the map, namely the 9/11 attacks in New York City. Islamic terrorists hijacked four planes that fatal day and flew two of them into the world trade centre. They attempted to crash a third plane into the White House and crashed a fourth plane into the Pentagon killing nearly 3000 individuals in total on that terrible September day. The events sent shock waves throughout the Western world and led to the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The response from the Western world was an enormous outpouring of sympathy for the US, the victims, and their families. This was also the case in Norway for the most part, but the MSM also gave voice to individuals who were less enthusiastic in their sympathy for the victims, and these individuals expressed their views in the media in the weeks following the attacks. The MSM also went into autopilot mode following the attacks and stressed that Islam and Muslims were in no way responsible for this atrocity, unlike what the media did last month after the Oslo attacks, when much of the blame was placed on the shoulders of conservative bloggers and the Progress Party.

On September 30, 2001, barely two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, radical leftist surgeons Hans Husum and Mads Gilbert were interviewed in Dagbladet:

“I am a doctor and I could never fly a plane into the World Trade Centre, but I defend the moral right of the people you call terrorists to attack the United States, as a legitimate response to 25 years of wars of aggression, mines, starvation and embargoes,” says Hans Husum, surgeon at the University Hospital of Tromsø.

“The attack on New York was not surprising, in light of the policies of the West in recent decades. I am outraged by the terrorist attack, but I’m just as upset about the suffering the U.S. has created. It is in this context, 5,000 dead people have to be viewed. If the U.S. government has a legitimate right to bomb and kill civilians in Iraq, the oppressed also have a moral right to attack the U.S. with the weapons they create. Dead civilians are the same whether they are Americans, Palestinians or Iraqis,” says physician and professor Mads Gilbert.

“Do you support a terrorist attack on the U.S.?”

“Terror is a bad weapon, but the answer is yes, within that context I have mentioned,” says Gilbert.

Dagbladet apparently had no problems printing an interview in which the victims were being portrayed as legitimate targets. Nor did Dagbladet have any qualms about letting two medical surgeons with extreme leftist views defend the terrorist attack and trivialise it. This is the complete opposite of what happened in the wake of the Oslo attacks when Dagbladet and the rest of the MSM initiated a witch hunt and actively named and shamed anyone who they suspected may have expressed opinions that could, in a very extreme sense, possibly be construed as potential indirect support for this attack.

But this wasn’t the only disgusting article about the 9/11 attacks. Parliamentarian politician Olav Gunnar Ballo from the SV (Socialist Left) made similar comments about the victims and the US decision to invade Afghanistan and go after the Taliban after September 11. On October 14, 2001, Ballo told Dagbladet:

These Satan’s murderers

The U.S. is a terrorist nation. No other country has caused more suffering in the world since WW2 according to Parliamentarian member of the Socialist Left (SV), Olav Gunnar Ballo.

“The United States has for decades through its foreign policy been involved in acts of terrorism and serious crimes against humanity. This is well documented,” he says.

“State sanctioned terrorism also kills people, and in this regard the U.S. has a lot to answer for. I can’t understand what we have to gain by wagging our tails for such countries. But this is exactly what our politicians are doing. The lack of critical thinking is frightening. To raise questions is not the same as supporting Osama Bin Laden,” says Ballo.

It’s pretty horrific to call someone seeking justice for the death of nearly 3000 innocent victims as ‘Satan’s murderers’. And the scary part is that people like Ballo, Gilbert and Husum who were guilty of indirectly supporting the terrorists and denigrating the victims of this atrocity were hardly even challenged by the media. The MSM were happy to reprint their views without further ado. If someone had made similar comments about the Oslo attacks the media would have ripped them to shreds and it would quite possibly have resulted in arrests. As a matter of fact, a local politician from Demokraterne was brought in for questioning by the police for having expressed the desire to kill parliamentarian politicians during a private conversation that was secretly taped and leaked to the media in the aftermath of the Oslo attacks.

But it comments that could be construed as support for the terrorists weren’t the only things found in the Norwegian MSM in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Political commentators practically lined up to urge people not to generalise and blame the Muslim community, even though the terrorists used the Koran as a justification to kill all those innocent victims, and even though numerous mosques and Islamic religious leaders praised the attacks.

In an article in Dagbladet from September 24, 2001, Bjørn Engesland and Gunnar M. Karlsen, from the Norwegian Helsingfors committee had this to say about the ‘religion of peace’:

The battle against terrorism must not legitimise extensive repression and abuse of own populations. Such suppression only leads to increased recruitment of terrorist groups, and targets innocent civilians in direct violation of universal human rights. It is also important to refrain from engaging in witch-hunts against Muslims and individuals of Arab descent. It is the responsibility of the government in the U.S. and in other countries — to ensure the personal safety for all citizens. Many have pointed out that the root causes of the growth in extreme terrorist groups simply can’t be ascribed to the prevalence of extreme religious ideologies. Poverty, unfair global power structures and oppressive regimes helps to create a breeding ground for extremism.

In this article the authors urge the media not to engage in a ‘witch hunt’. The message that they’re trying to convey is that not all Muslims are terrorists and that a religion shouldn’t be judged solely on the actions of a tiny minority. Dagbladet was eager to get this message across after this incident where Muslim terrorists were involved, but they certainly didn’t heed this advice after the Oslo attacks which clearly show the bias displayed by the media when it comes to Islam and Muslims.

Another article from Finn Sjue, head lecturer in Journalism at the College of Oslo, was printed on October 25, 2001, and it had a similar message. And again Dagbladet was more than willing to comply:

Police surveillance is about to lose it ethical footing in its dealings with Muslims and various ethnic minorities. At the moment there is a silent harassment of Muslims who are suspected of having ties with Osama bin Laden and his organisation

In the last couple of weeks, many Muslims have been brought in for questioning by the police all over the country.

The conversations are at times reminiscent of interrogation. “You are a fundamentalist and shouldn’t expect anything else.” Or: “You are related to X and Y so therefore you must expect to answer our questions.”

These interviews do not only affect those who are brought in for questioning. The ripple effects are significant. For each person who is being interrogated, a whole family, relatives and friends are being intimidated. Some even refrain from having direct contact with the “accused”. This means that hundreds — perhaps even more — in the minority community feel embarrassed and harassed.

People who have been questioned can have problems in their relationships with their employers because more stringent vetting processes are now being employed on ‘these people’ before they are hired.

An indirect consequence may be that entire minority groups are being stigmatised. They receive a stamp on their forehead.

And in another article from the same newspaper from September 22, 2001 the virulent attacks continued:

Only one representative In the U.S. Congress voted against all the powers which the President requested to prepare the country for battles both inside and outside its borders. Monitoring, eavesdropping and surveillance will be allowed on a large scale.

This is how a mood based on ignorance is whipped up. People are generalising about Islam like never before. People who can barely spell the name of the religion know precisely what its ethical core looks like. They can’t tell Sikhs and Arabs apart, but scapegoats have already been designated and killed. President Bush obviously saw the dangers this week when he visited a mosque to show that it is not Islam the US is at war with.

As I mentioned previously in this essay, there is a distinct pattern in the way the media are reporting Islamic terrorist attacks. The media have maintained this mantra ever since 9/11 and used it after every single major Islamic terrorist attack since. After the Madrid attacks which occurred on March 11, 2004, in which Islamic terrorists blew up several passenger trains and killed over 190 people, the Norwegian MSM continued to exonerate Islam and its practitioners. Even though the terrorist were devout Muslims and justified their actions with passages from the Koran.

This obvious bias shown by the MSM is mind-boggling. Even in those cases where the terrorists are clearly influenced by certain religious teachings, the MSM refuses to pass any blame onto the religion that made the attacks possible in the first place. The media’s behaviour in these cases is akin to exonerating any assumed accomplices of Breivik that had actively encouraged and helped him to commit his crimes of any guilt whatsoever and to ridicule those who dare point out the illogic of this. And this is exactly what the majority of the MSM in Norway are doing at the moment.

Let’s have a look at some of the excuses that were published in the Norwegian media in the aftermath of the Madrid bombings.

On March 22, 2004, Christopher Gambert from the Centre Against Racial Discrimination urged people not to question the teachings of Islam or to engage in ‘Islamophobia’:

Since September 11 many innocent people, even here in Norway, have been subjected to grossly unfair treatment and increased suspicion because of their religion, skin colour and origin. At the same time the government’s violations of privacy and international human rights laws have moved at a rapid pace. In the aftermath of the Madrid attacks, there have been plenty of new proposals for increased surveillance and control of Muslims and other ‘suspicious’ communities.

Though the new ‘terror laws’ represent a loss of basic rights for everyone in a society, it is still the minority population who are the most vulnerable. Not because they are more guilty, but because it is they who are blamed.

This is not a new phenomenon; Norwegian history has always been shaped by the state’s tragic abuse of Travellers, Gypsies, Jews and Sami. The demonisation of the enemies has always fulfilled its function, even if the enemies have changed with time.

Again we see this absurd willingness to find excuses for Islam and to try and convince the readers that the people who carried out these evil attacks were abusing the religion of Islam. Did it ever occur to the MSM that Breivik was perhaps abusing the writings of opponents of Islam in his manifesto?

Here’s another quote from Dagbladet, from March 15, 2004:

There is no room in the U.S. for ethnic nationalism. After September 11 many American Muslims felt persecuted, but a common front against Islam and Muslims never emerged. The risk that a European war against Islamic fundamentalism turns inward is much greater. And that would be just as helpful to bin Laden’s war of civilisations as the U.S. occupation war in Iraq. But the danger of this happening in Spain is perhaps less than in other countries in Europe, since Spain has a proud and knowledgeable relationship with its “Muslim past” under the Moors.

As we can see from this quote Dagbladet will also engaged in historic revisionism if they suspect that it will promote their agenda, which of course is to ridicule opponents of Islam and absolve Islam of any wrongdoing.

And this exoneration of Islam also occurred in the wake of the London attacks, when Islamic suicide bombers, home grown this time, decided to detonate rucksacks stuffed with explosives on packed commuter trains and busses in order to strike at the heart of the evil empire of the unbelievers. Like all the other Islamic terrorists before them, the London bombers found justifications for their actions in the Koran and in the hadith, but the MSM refused even to contemplate this piece of vital information. Instead they resorted to what they’d done in all the other major terrorists’ attacks, namely, find excuses for Islam and Muslims.

In Dagbladet on July 7, 2005, Tony Blair was quoted:

The Muslim Council of Britain says in a statement that they condemn those responsible for the terrorist bombings.

“These evil atrocities make us all victims. The evil people want to demoralise us as a nation and divide us as people, the Council writes, and it encourages everyone to help the police find the culprits.”

Prime Minister Tony Blair is delighted that the Council so clearly distances themselves from the terror. “The terrorists are acting in the name of Islam, but I know that the great majority of Muslims worldwide do not support this terror,” says Blair.

Maybe the Muslim Council of Britain found it expedient to condemn the attack with all the media attention on them. But it’s an undeniable fact that figures from a survey conducted in the British Muslim community found that more than 13 percent of British Muslims supported Islamic terrorism. This finding certainly contradicts the message that the Islamic council was trying to convey, and it certainly didn’t support the notion that the majority of the Muslim community in the UK renounced this terrorist attack. Nor did Tony Blair’s claim that the majority of the world’s Muslim community reject this terrorist attack carry a high degree of accuracy. But for Dagbladet the important thing is to print articles finding excuses for Islam, and not to expose Islam for what it is.

And, as always whenever Islamic terrorists strike, Norwegian political commentators line up to join the exoneration of Islam. This time it was Norwegian bishop Ole Christian Kvarme’s turn to join the choir. In an article from VG Nett, July 14, 2005, Bishop Kvarme stated:

Fanaticism that commits violence in the name of God is rebellion against God and a fundamental betrayal of His creation. No religious reasons, no political goal can justify such acts of violence.

“We will continue together to counter the attacks of religious minorities in our own country and help create trust and openness between the groups in our society,” says Kvarme.

“Jews, Christians and Muslims have some common values, and this congregation of different faiths is a selection of these common values, which are important in a society. It is also important for us to help build trust between different social groups.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if the MSM newspaper in Norway stood up at least once for the conservative blogosphere and the Progress Party?

And wouldn’t it be nice if at least one MSM newspaper actually sat down and studied the message of the Counterjihad community instead of assuming things and passing judgements on those who don’t subscribe to the official line in these matters?

And wouldn’t it be nice if the MSM at least once put Islam under the magnifying glass instead of constantly trying to find excuses in order not to ‘disturb’ the very fragile cohesion between the various ethnic and religious groups in this country?

And, by the way, in this case the bishop is either deliberately lying or he is just plain ignorant. If he had actually read the Koran he would have known that it commands Muslims to fight unbelievers. Violence in this context is in fact encouraged in Islam, and it is certainly not a rebellion against Allah. In fact, the suicide bombers found their justification in Islamic doctrines.

But despite the massive media coverage urging people not to pass hasty and unfounded judgments on Islam, the Muslim community in London still lamented the fact that they were being unfairly stigmatised after the attacks. Another quote from Aftenposten July 9, 2005:

The Muslims in London are upset, angry and worried. They are sad because the city where they feel at home has become the battleground for terrorists. They are angry because extreme Muslims will bring attention to their ethnic group. And they are concerned about how the rest of the population in England will deal with them after this incident. After the terrorist attack against the United States on September 11, they experienced several negative reactions. Now it may happen again, and this time perhaps even with greater force.

Erna Solberg, the leader of the conservative Party in Norway, even went so far as to compare Norwegians’ attitudes towards Muslims with German anti-Semitism in the 1930s. She made this comparison based on the writings published on anti-Islamic websites such as Document.no, which is very strange, as there is nothing in these writings that could even be construed as incitement to hatred or incitement to commit violence towards the Muslims, as of course was the case of the vile anti-Semitism in pre-war Germany. Mrs Solberg is also guilty of stigmatising the entire Norwegian population for harbouring strong anti-Muslim sentiments as a result of some articles published on a handful of conservative websites. What Mrs Solberg is guilty of here is nothing less than vicious slander, whose only goal is to intimidate others from expressing similar anti-Islamic views.

There’s also an implicit threat in all the vitriolic slander that has been presented in the MSM recently, which designed is to show people that they will receive the same treatment if they dare to overstep the line and question the official policy in this matter.

Regarding the media in Norway, this biased reporting is only feasible because the majority of journalists in Norway vote for left-wing political parties. It’s also made possible because of the massive subsidies that the authorities give to the media, which of course raises some serious questions about the independence of the press in Norway. The main television broadcaster in Norway NRK is state owned and the CEO is selected by the Government.

Additionally, the labour union which most journalists in Norway belong to, Norsk Journalistlag is left-wing, and it exerts influence over its members in various matters. It even printed a leaflet in the early 1990s instructing its members how they should cover cases regarding Multiculturalism, and avoid stereotyping the immigrant community in Norway. In the leaflet members were encouraged to:

• Be aware of the language you use. Try to use words and phrases that give an accurate and correct picture of Norwegian society. Avoid using language that creates unnecessary differences among the ethnic groups.
• Avoid generalising when writing about immigrants; this will only strengthen negative stereotypes of people of non-Norwegian descent.
• When writing about the multicultural society, try to focus on ordinary immigrants and how they experience everyday life in Norway.
• Never reveal a person’s religion, ethnicity or cultural background if it’s not absolutely relevant to the case. Be very careful with this information when writing about incidents involving crime.
• Always check facts and statistics. Be very careful with statistics that could strengthen negative stereotypes of ethnic minorities.
• Feel free to write about negative incidents where immigrants are involved, but avoid angles that will give the entire immigration population a bad name.
• Try to find as many sources as possible among the immigrant population. This will give you a wider perspective when writing stories about immigrants.
• Try to avoid patriotic rhetoric in sport journalism. This will give room to negative stereotyping of foreigners. Try instead to focus on the contributions of foreigners in Norwegian sports.
• Avoid uncritical reports of racial abuse. Always double check information and accusations originating from racist organisations. Always get information that will counter racist propaganda.
• Try to stay clear of political rhetoric that will increase immigration phobia and increase hostility towards immigrants. Try to avoid writing stories that will increase hostilities between Norwegians and immigrants.
• Try to describe how immigrants experience discrimination, racism and immigration phobia, and try to focus on how these things affect their lives.

Maybe the MSM should put away the leaflet for a second or two and actually try to engage in real journalism instead of being the propaganda machine for the establishment? Perhaps then we would see some honest journalistic reporting for a change.