Albuquerque’s Muslim murders: Another case of media, politicians making premature assumptions (analysis)


It is a disturbing and unjournalistic practice: Assuming racism or “hate” involving crimes committed against a victim who is or was part of a minority group (but never making the assumption when crimes are committed against whites).

The most recent high-profile case is the sad group of murders of four Muslim men in Albuquerque, NM over a nine month period.

Four Muslim men were shot and killed in a 9 mont period in Albuquerue

There was no indication or evidence that the killings involved what the government considers “hate” (to constitute “hate crimes”), or that they were committed because the victims were Muslim. Yet that didn’t stop the assumptions.

Many in the news media joined political advocates and analysts in the unfounded conclusion, without evidence, that the murders were “anti-Muslim hate crimes.” President Biden stoked the racist sentiment tweeting: “These hateful attacks have no place in America,” that he was “angered and saddened” by the killings, and that his administration “stands strongly with the Muslim community.”

Suspect Muhammad Syed

Then came word that the ‘primary suspect’ arrested for the crime, 51-year-old Muhammad Syed, is also a Muslim, that he attended the same mosque as the victims, and the crimes were allegedly committed over inter-personal conflicts. Syed is reported to be a foreigner from Afghanistan. He reportedly has denied involvement in the crimes.

Considering the long and tortured history of high-profile cases where reporting jumped to conclusions but was wrong, journalists should be especially careful to follow what used to be the common practice of not making firm conclusions before the full facts are known.

Examples include:

  • The Obama Justice Dept. ruled that black suspect Michael Brown did not have his hands up (“Hands up, Don’t shoot”) in 2014 when police officer Darren Wilson shot him in self defense.
  • The Washington Post settled a $250 million defamation lawsuit with Nick Sandmann after the paper and many in the media falsely reported that he was an aggressor in a confrontation with a Native American in Washington DC.
  • The FBI wrongly accused and the media defamed Richard Jewell in the Atlanta Olympic bombings.
  • The media and US government defamed Wen Ho Lee, falsely calling him a Chinese spy.
  • Scientist Steven Hatfill won millions from the government after the FBI and media wrongly accused him in anthrax attacks.
  • Jussie Smollett was convicted after making false, racist claims that he was attacked and noosed by white Trump supporters.
  • An FBI lawyer doctored evidence in a wiretap against Trump associate Carter Page, who was falsely portrayed in the media as a Russian spy.
  • Kyle Rittenhouse was accused of wrongful shootings of his attackers during a riot, and was widely convicted in the media, but was acquitted in a court of law after a jury said he acted in self defense.
  • Rolling Stone defamed University of Virginia frat brothers who were falsely accused of sexual abuse.
  • A week before Trump was elected, Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Mississippi was torched and the words “Vote Trump” found painted on the outside. The mayor condemned the incident as a hate crime and stated it was “an attack on the black church and the black community.” However, police later arrested a black church member for the arson. They say the man staged the fire to look like an attack by Trump supporters. Even today, some of the corrected news reports retain headlines seeming to blame Trump.
  • The day after Trump was elected, there was an incident at Elon University in North Carolina that made national news. Hispanic students found a “hateful note” written on a classroom whiteboard reading, “Bye Bye Latinos.” After the story made news, it was learned that the message was written by “a Latino student who was upset about the results of the election.”
  • Also the day after Trump was elected, a gay man, reportedly a filmmaker, claimed that homophobic Trump supporters smashed his face with a bottle outside a bar in Santa Monica, Calif. A bloody photo was posted on Twitter, and he was said to have been treated at a local hospital. Police investigated the media reports. They said no complaint was ever filed, there was no evidence of a crime, and a check of local hospitals showed no victim in such an incident.
  • The week after Trump’s election, a Muslim student at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, claimed Trump supporters pulled off her head covering, and assaulted and robbed her. She later admitted fabricating the story.
  • A month after Trump’s election, a Muslim-American woman claimed Trump supporters tried to steal her headwear and harassed her on the New York City subway. She ultimately was arrested after confessing she made up the whole story.
  • On June 28, 2018, after a newsroom shooting, a newspaper reporter falsely tweeted that the shooter “dropped his [Trump Make America Great Again] hat on newsroom floor before opening fire.”

It is certainly acceptable for journalists to note theories of a crime, including those that activists are invoking, but it is not acceptable for journalists to tacitly endorse such assumptions and theories prematurely.

As of this publication, President Biden as not corrected the record publicly to acknowledge the apparently mistaken, and racist assumption regarding the Muslim killings. There is no obvious record, when conducting a simple Internet search, showing that analysts or media outlets acknowledged the apparent error in the assumptions, though many of them reported the arrest of the Muslim suspect.

Subsequent articles, after the arrest of the Muslim suspect, had entirely different themes and tones than they did before the suspect was identified. Now, instead of assuming a racist motivation on the part of a killer, there is a plea not to prematurely dig into motivations. “Victim’s brother says please stop guessing why,” reads one headline.

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5 thoughts on “Albuquerque’s Muslim murders: Another case of media, politicians making premature assumptions (analysis)”

  1. If there is one thing that both sides do equally and with depressing regularity, it is to jump to conclusions before the true story comes out. It is my (unproven) observation that the liberal side tends to jump to conclusions to blame some incident on racial or gender bias while the conservative side tends to jump to conclusions based on supposed government plots. There are items in SA’s list, such as the Michael Brown and Mississippi church burning, that illustrate this tendency. In these cases, the media hyped a story that turned out to be false (and in the Michael Brown case, continued to hype it even after new facts emerged and the story started to change). But there are others in this list that, at least based on the information provided, don’t seem to fit. Just because someone claimed that they were harassed or attacked by Trump supporters and their story is reported in the media, doesn’t mean that there is bias. The media is just reporting what they are being told.
    And all I heard on NBC and CBS was that the Albuquerque incident was being investigated as a possible hate crime. That was completely accurate.
    I agree with this statement from SA: “It is certainly acceptable for journalists to note theories of a crime, including those that activists are invoking, but it is not acceptable for journalists to tacitly endorse such assumptions and theories prematurely.”
    So we have Biden and others from the liberal side implying that the shootings in Albuquerque was a hate crime. That is certainly wrong, regardless of how it turns out. But since the raid on Mar-a-Lago, we have been treated to non-stop accusations of FBI and DOJ misconduct (and worse) from Trump supporters who clearly have zero knowledge of all of the facts of the case. It may turn out that there was, in fact, misconduct. But we certainly don’t know that now. But that hasn’t stopped them. Why isn’t that in SA’s list?
    And I remember an article in this newsletter from last year about the (Black) guy who ran over and killed a (White) Capitol police officer. The article said that it was “not known” if the motivation was “anti-White” or “anti-police”. Well, it turned out that the guy had pretty severe mental issues. It’s hard to see how SA didn’t “tacitly endorse such assumptions and theories prematurely” in that situation. And, like Biden, to date there has been no clarification and/or correction in this newsletter about this.
    And as SA has pointed out that at least the media is now covering the story correctly, even if they haven’t admitted their past poor reporting. So when are we going to get that same sort of correct reporting on the Big Lie? When are those on Fox, OAN, and Newsmax (at least) going to admit that they jumped to conclusions and that there is no evidence to support their breathless reporting on voter fraud? In fact, when are we going to get some of that reporting on that in this newsletter?

    1. Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that all drop boxes in WI were illegal, thus all votes cast via them were illegal.

      In Michigan nursing home staff charged with voter fraud for voting for residents in the home. Many family members of those residents shocked to learn their family member (who were deemed incompetent, and hadn’t voted for many years) voted for the first time in a long time in 2020.

      2000 Mules documents multiple cases of potential voter fraud.

      Investigations in both GA and AZ found thousands of illegally cast votes.

      As you counter with lame arguments ask yourself, if all of these benefitted Trump would you still be claiming the election was “the most secure ever”?

      Keep in mind, the very people defending Dominion voting machines in the 2020 election were saying they weren’t secure and easily hacked in the 2016 election.. That Jimmy Cater, among other Democrats, said that mail-in voting opens numerous avenues for fraud.

      But I do agree with you, we do need correct reporting on “The Big Lie” and the Democrat election fraud in 2020

      1. Thanks for the reply. It’s always good to get at least a somewhat detailed response. I copied your response and added my comments below:
        Claim #1: Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that all drop boxes in WI were illegal, thus all votes cast via them were illegal.
        My Response: It is true that the Wisconsin Supreme Court recently ruled that the use of drop boxes is illegal. However, that ruling did not affect the 2020 election. Votes that were cast via drop boxes in 2020 were not illegal then. This mirrors the ruling in some state that I can’t remember where the judge said that the time to bring some suit that affects voting methods was BEFORE the election not AFTER it. There’s no legal remedy after the election.
        An article by Politifact summed it up this way (link to the article is below):
        1) A UW-Madison elections expert said the Supreme Court ruling on drop boxes is not retroactive.
        2) The conservative law firm that filed the drop box lawsuit also said the ruling is not retroactive.
        https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jul/14/donald-trump/trump-back-hot-seat-claim-linking-ballot-box-rulin/
        I also found this in another article: “Ballot drop boxes were used in at least 43 cities, 46 villages and 156 towns throughout the state in the 2020 election, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau. Many of those were in areas in the northeastern and northwestern parts of the state, where Trump won the vast majority of counties.” So perhaps Trump benefited from the drop boxes.
        Claim #2: In Michigan nursing home staff charged with voter fraud for voting for residents in the home.
        My Response: “An Associated Press review of election fraud in six battleground states found state officials identified a total of 56 potential instances of voter fraud in Michigan, a number which represents less than 1% of President Joe Biden’s margin of victory in the state.” No one is saying that there was no fraud. But Trump lost Michigan by 154,000 votes. These charges of voter fraud don’t come remotely close to that number.
        Claim #3: 2000 Mules documents multiple cases of potential voter fraud.
        My Response: Sure there is “potential” voter fraud. But there is the “potential” that my neighbor is really an ISIS sympathizer. Remember that 2000 Mules didn’t identify any specific group or individual involved in the “potential” fraud. All it showed was that some anonymous people walked by drop boxes (and the geotracking data could not even establish that those people were close enough to the boxes to put anything into them). Here is a quote from an article which notes that every ballot is subject to the same checking process regardless of how it was delivered:
        “Mashburn, who said he watched the film, said it suggested there were 92,000 “illegitimate, manufactured votes” in the state, but that’s not true. Even if a ballot is illegally dropped off, it goes through the same checks as other ballots to ensure the vote is legitimate, he said. “A ballot harvested vote might be a perfectly legal vote,” he said. “It’s just the manner of its delivery was illegal.”
        There are plenty of articles out there explaining the shortcomings of “2000 Mules”. Here is one:
        https://www.ajc.com/politics/what-2000-mules-leaves-out-from-ballot-harvesting-claims/FFMNUU56RVBRNOLZKWHUREQPEU/
        Or this:
        https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-usa-mules/fact-check-does-2000-mules-provide-evidence-of-voter-fraud-in-the-2020-u-s-presidential-election-idUSL2N2XJ0OQ
        Or this:
        https://www.npr.org/2022/05/17/1098787088/a-pro-trump-film-suggests-its-data-are-so-accurate-it-solved-a-murder-thats-fals
        Claim #4: Investigations in both GA and AZ found thousands of illegally cast votes.
        My Response: I live in Arizona and the claim about thousands of illegally cast votes is simply not true. Full stop. AG Brnovich recently completed an investigation into voter fraud charges resulting from the Cyber Ninjas audit (which confirmed that Biden won, by the way). Here is the summary from the local paper: “Former President Donald Trump took another election loss Monday after Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich revealed his office found no evidence that hundreds of dead people had voted in the 2020 presidential election. Overall, the allegations of “widespread deceased voters from the Senate Audit and other complaint … are insufficient and not corroborated,” Brnovich said.”
        As far as Georgia is concerned, here is an article summarizing the fraud charges and resultant investigation: “State investigators say they have not found anywhere near enough fraud cases to put in doubt Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia.”
        https://www.ajc.com/politics/election/five-fraud-claims-what-investigators-found/ISF2NV2RKBF2TIEI4ULXWJFZNA/
        Claim #5: As you counter with lame arguments ask yourself, if all of these benefitted Trump would you still be claiming the election was “the most secure ever”?
        My Response: How would you know that my arguments would be “lame” before I made them? All I know is that my side has all of the evidence provided thus far. Seems a long way from “lame” to me. And if they are “lame” they should be easy to rebut. But that hasn’t happened so far. It is certainly possible that I would feel differently if Trump had benefitted from this supposed voter fraud. There’s no way of knowing for sure since that’s not what happened. But here’s another question: if Trump had acted like a mature adult and accepted his loss (you know, like literally every other Presidential loser has), would the Big Lie have continued to this day? Methinks not.
        Claim #6: Keep in mind, the very people defending Dominion voting machines in the 2020 election were saying they weren’t secure and easily hacked in the 2016 election.. That Jimmy Carter, among other Democrats, said that mail-in voting opens numerous avenues for fraud.
        My Response: Of all of the voter fraud allegations that anyone has advanced, the idea that Dominion changed votes is the most ludicrous. It’s really hard to understand how anyone could still be talking about this when so many hand recounts matched the machine count. The hand recounts literally took the machines out of the picture. Despite this, in Arizona at least, they had to go through the motions to show that the machines were not connected to the internet and compromised in any other way just to (try to) satisfy those for whom logic is clearly a minor pastime.
        Summary: None of these allegations hold any water, certainly not sufficient water to change the outcome of the election. It took me about ½ hour to find these articles on line to debunk these claims. How long did you investigate these claims? My original comment about not jumping to conclusions can be summarized thusly: Every time someone had a brain cramp idea about voter fraud, Trump supporters didn’t wait until they had been investigated; they immediately claimed that this was the long-sought “proof”. There were many articles in this newsletter over the past year+ that gave lots of ink to those stories. Then when they were investigated and found to be bogus, there was nothing reporting those results. That’s not right.
        No one can prove that the election was not stolen. That would require proving a negative and that can’t be done. All I know is that every credible (and incredible) claim of voter fraud has been investigated by many states (led my Republicans in many cases) and nothing has been found. But it’s still not enough.

      2. Thanks for the reply. It’s always good to get at least a somewhat detailed response. I copied your response and added my comments below:
        Claim #1: Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that all drop boxes in WI were illegal, thus all votes cast via them were illegal.
        My Response: It is true that the Wisconsin Supreme Court recently ruled that the use of drop boxes is illegal. However, that ruling did not affect the 2020 election. Votes that were cast via drop boxes in 2020 were not illegal then. This mirrors the ruling in some state that I can’t remember where the judge said that the time to bring some suit that affects voting methods was BEFORE the election not AFTER it. There’s no legal remedy after the election.
        An article by Politifact summed it up this way (link to the article is below):
        1) A UW-Madison elections expert said the Supreme Court ruling on drop boxes is not retroactive.
        2) The conservative law firm that filed the drop box lawsuit also said the ruling is not retroactive.
        https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jul/14/donald-trump/trump-back-hot-seat-claim-linking-ballot-box-rulin/
        I also found this in another article: “Ballot drop boxes were used in at least 43 cities, 46 villages and 156 towns throughout the state in the 2020 election, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau. Many of those were in areas in the northeastern and northwestern parts of the state, where Trump won the vast majority of counties.” So perhaps Trump benefited from the drop boxes.
        Claim #2: In Michigan nursing home staff charged with voter fraud for voting for residents in the home.
        My Response: “An Associated Press review of election fraud in six battleground states found state officials identified a total of 56 potential instances of voter fraud in Michigan, a number which represents less than 1% of President Joe Biden’s margin of victory in the state.” No one is saying that there was no fraud. But Trump lost Michigan by 154,000 votes. These charges of voter fraud don’t come remotely close to that number.
        Claim #3: 2000 Mules documents multiple cases of potential voter fraud.

        My Response: Sure there is “potential” voter fraud. But there is the “potential” that my neighbor is really an ISIS sympathizer. Remember that 2000 Mules didn’t identify any specific group or individual involved in the “potential” fraud. All it showed was that some anonymous people walked by drop boxes (and the geotracking data could not even establish that those people were close enough to the boxes to put anything into them). Here is a quote from an article which notes that every ballot is subject to the same checking process regardless of how it was delivered:
        “Mashburn, who said he watched the film, said it suggested there were 92,000 “illegitimate, manufactured votes” in the state, but that’s not true. Even if a ballot is illegally dropped off, it goes through the same checks as other ballots to ensure the vote is legitimate, he said. “A ballot harvested vote might be a perfectly legal vote,” he said. “It’s just the manner of its delivery was illegal.”
        There are plenty of articles out there explaining the shortcomings of “2000 Mules”. Here is one:
        https://www.ajc.com/politics/what-2000-mules-leaves-out-from-ballot-harvesting-claims/FFMNUU56RVBRNOLZKWHUREQPEU/
        Or this:
        https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-usa-mules/fact-check-does-2000-mules-provide-evidence-of-voter-fraud-in-the-2020-u-s-presidential-election-idUSL2N2XJ0OQ
        Or this:
        https://www.npr.org/2022/05/17/1098787088/a-pro-trump-film-suggests-its-data-are-so-accurate-it-solved-a-murder-thats-fals
        Claim #4: Investigations in both GA and AZ found thousands of illegally cast votes.
        My Response: I live in Arizona and the claim about thousands of illegally cast votes is simply not true. Full stop. AG Brnovich recently completed an investigation into voter fraud charges resulting from the Cyber Ninjas audit (which confirmed that Biden won, by the way). Here is the summary from the local paper: “Former President Donald Trump took another election loss Monday after Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich revealed his office found no evidence that hundreds of dead people had voted in the 2020 presidential election. Overall, the allegations of “widespread deceased voters from the Senate Audit and other complaint … are insufficient and not corroborated,” Brnovich said.”
        As far as Georgia is concerned, here is an article summarizing the fraud charges and resultant investigation: “State investigators say they have not found anywhere near enough fraud cases to put in doubt Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia.”
        https://www.ajc.com/politics/election/five-fraud-claims-what-investigators-found/ISF2NV2RKBF2TIEI4ULXWJFZNA/
        Claim #5: As you counter with lame arguments ask yourself, if all of these benefitted Trump would you still be claiming the election was “the most secure ever”?
        My Response: How would you know that my arguments would be “lame” before I made them? All I know is that my side has all of the evidence provided thus far. Seems a long way from “lame” to me. And if they are “lame” they should be easy to rebut. But that hasn’t happened so far. It is certainly possible that I would feel differently if Trump had benefitted from this supposed voter fraud. There’s no way of knowing for sure since that’s not what happened. But here’s another question: if Trump had acted like a mature adult and accepted his loss (you know, like literally every other Presidential loser has), would the Big Lie have continued to this day? Methinks not.
        Claim #6: Keep in mind, the very people defending Dominion voting machines in the 2020 election were saying they weren’t secure and easily hacked in the 2016 election.. That Jimmy Carter, among other Democrats, said that mail-in voting opens numerous avenues for fraud.
        My Response: Of all of the voter fraud allegations that anyone has advanced, the idea that Dominion changed votes is the most ludicrous. It’s really hard to understand how anyone could still be talking about this when so many hand recounts matched the machine count. The hand recounts literally took the machines out of the picture. Despite this, in Arizona at least, they had to go through the motions to show that the machines were not connected to the internet and compromised in any other way just to (try to) satisfy those for whom logic is clearly a minor pastime.
        Summary: None of these allegations hold any water, certainly not sufficient water to change the outcome of the election. It took me about ½ hour to find these articles on line to debunk these claims. How long did you investigate these claims? My original comment about not jumping to conclusions can be summarized thusly: Every time someone had a brain cramp idea about voter fraud, Trump supporters didn’t wait until they had been investigated; they immediately claimed that this was the long-sought “proof”. There were many articles in this newsletter over the past year+ that gave lots of ink to those stories. Then when they were investigated and found to be bogus, there was nothing reporting those results. That’s not right.
        No one can prove that the election was not stolen. That would require proving a negative and that can’t be done. All I know is that every credible (and incredible) claim of voter fraud has been investigated by many states (led my Republicans in many cases) and nothing has been found. But it’s still not enough.

    2. Your continued insistence of “no voter fraud” leaves the readers with no doubt you do not keep up with current events, or only read the Leftist press. The 2020 election was stolen from many candidates–all on the right side of the spectrum–and it has taken time to get past the crooked AGs and DAs and Obama appointed judges to see some progress. Plus, there is convincing evidence with the 200 Mules documentary.
      Why isn’t SA discussing the accusations of bias against FBI? Because the FBI has become the Biden “Junta’s” arm of retaliation and persecution. Again, consider current events, like Garland “siccing” the FBI on parents over school board meetings.

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