Blatant Racism Alert: Three Muslims Who Suck, And Other Stories Similar To “Muslim Cab Drivers Save Bialys Shop”

By on November 10, 2011  Featured story, News
Nov 102011
 

Yesterday, BrooklynDaily.com (the online outlet for the Bay Ridge Courier, Bay News, and other assorted papers in News Corporation’s Community Newspaper Group) reported on the rescue of Coney Island Bialys and Bagels by two Muslim-American businessmen. Here’s the link to their story, though you should probably read the story at The Jewish Daily Forward, too, since they broke the news over a week ago.

That the Community Newspaper Group is a week late to a story doesn’t shock me, of course. What did shock me was the Daily’s list of “similar stories” to what was otherwise a feel-good story about people reaching across ethnic lines to bake sweet, delicious bread:

Image from BrooklynDaily.com as of November 9, 2011.

Image from BrooklynDaily.com as of November 9, 2011.

Not that this is anything other than News Corp doing what they do best- conflating any positive news about Muslims and Arabs in our community with terrorism and dictators – but their idea of stories similar to “Muslim-American businessmen to rescue Jewish bakery” are a story about a local terrorist moneyman and three of Shavana Abruzzo’s “Muslims who suck” editorials. Yes, the similarities to bakery ownership are striking. I can totally see it. Can’t you?

No? Maybe that’s because the stories aren’t similar at all, and the effort to make the connection is blatantly racist.

  • ES

    Not that I would ever defend those peeps, but my guess is that the stories, based on some algorithm perhaps (a similarity in terms used in the stories? Like “Muslim,” “Jew,” etc), are randomly generated. I think…

    I took a lot of hell (i.e. “This is a terrible story” — loved that) from all directions when I wrote a post for SBites about what turned out to be a randomly generated list by Urban Spoon,” something I thought editors had initially cobbled together.

  • Henry Stewart

    yeah I’m sure those stories are generated randomly by keyword. But you could argue that if all of Brooklyn Daily’s articles that are tagged with “Muslim” are about terrorism, or are anti-Muslim editorials, then perhaps the editors should make an effort to expand their coverage of the community.

  • http://www.nedberke.com Ned Berke

    Was going to say the same thing as Erica and Henry. I don’t think the editors made the list or were racist in their intentions.

    However, Shavana Abruzzo and her column teeter on the border of “hate speech” week after week, and it’s disgusting that the editors let it continue to go on just because it generates letters. If the only way you can get an audience is to be an asshole, it’s time to get out of the news biz.

  • http://www.bksouthie.com/ Brian

    I agree with all of the points brought up by ES, Henry, and Ned. I guess to start, I do know generally how “similar storied” apps on web sites work, and would agree that a certain amount of leeway has to be given to how the software does its keyword searches and decides upon the best fits. Even if I’d still like to see more weight given to words like “bakery” instead of “Muslim,” I get that the system isn’t perfect. If the editors or author were to pick their own similar stories, I have no doubt these would NOT be the ones they’d pick.

    But to Henry’s point – it seems like there is a serious imbalance in stories. The obvious conclusion to draw from this is that the vast majority of the site’s stories about Muslims are negative. If true, it would really help if more stories like this one were published. Starting, like, now. At least then, one might expect to see “Cab Driver Save Bialys and Bagels” in the similar-article list of subsequent stories. Until then, I don’t think it’s unfair to call out the publisher for an institutional bias against a significant group in the community.