Ground Zero mosque

[Update; Thursday, 7:10 pm Eastern: Simmons admitted his error about the '93 World Trade Center bombing on his Twitter account: "Made critical error on CNN last nite. Was thinking of last major terrorist attack on US soil in OKC by McVeigh & mispoke"] Russell Simmons, founder of the hip-hop label Def Jam, bizarrely and inaccurately claimed during an interview on Wednesday's Larry King Live on…

As media members across the fruited plain try to convince skeptical Americans that Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Islamic Imam behind the Ground Zero mosque, is a moderate cleric, most have totally ignored an interview that he gave on CBS's "60 Minutes" less than three weeks after the 9/11 attacks.To demonstrate just how wrong the press are about this man, Fox News's Bill O'Reilly played the relevant…

Appearing in the 2:00PM ET hour on MSNBC, New York Daily News reporter Samuel Goldsmith cited a poll featured on the paper's website, about opposition to the Ground Zero mosque: "[it] shows that 70% of New Yorkers say that they think the opposition is out of hatred and religious intolerance."Unfortunately, Goldsmith forgot to mention that it was a completely unscientific poll that only appeared…

For two days running, MSNBC's "Morning Joe" seemed overwhelmingly in favor of allowing the Ground Zero mosque to be built, despite a poll showing Americans being opposed to the construction of the mosque. The panels included co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, and liberal columnist Mike Barnicle as well as MSNBC contributors Mark Halperin, Norah O'Donnell, and Pat Buchanan. Their…

MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday complained about "ugly" comments arising from the debate over the Ground Zero mosque. She also spun the founder and chief proponent of the construction as a moderate, "despite some criticism of the Imam from the right." [MP3 audio here.]After fellow MSNBC anchor Chuck Todd asserted that the President felt like he had to speak out because "the debate was…

[Update, 8:10 pm EDT: The original version of this article identified Roland Martin as a "black talk radio host." He no longer has his own radio talk show. He is still a CNN contributor, columnist syndicated by Creators Syndicate, and analyst for for the Tom Joyner Morning Show, according to his own website.] On Tuesday's Anderson Cooper 360, CNN contributor Roland Martin strongly pushed for the…

"Ground Zero is not Auschwitz, so why all the analogies?"USA Today religion blogger Cathy Lynn Grossman asks that question with the headline of her August 18 Faith & Reason post. Grossman explained that the comparison stems from conservatives who pointed out an incident in the early 1990s when Pope John Paul II halted a planned convent near the Auschwitz concentration camp. The nuns had every…

Bill Press is confused. He can't seem to decide whether Ground Zero is a sacred site. When he was using the memory of 9/11 as a political football to blast Glenn Beck, lower Manhattan was hallowed ground. But now that conservatives are making that claim, Press has proclaimed that the area "is not a sacred site." Make up your mind, Bill!In June, Press compared Beck's planned 8/28 rally at the…

George Stephanopoulos on Wednesday again focused on GOP reaction to the Ground Zero mosque, challenging Karl Rove as to whether Republicans such as Newt Gingrich will "undercut the work" President Obama has been doing to reach out to moderate Muslims. Stephanopoulos highlighted Republican officials "who worry that the kind of rhetoric we've been hearing from people like Newt Gingrich is going to…

Mark August 18, 2010, on your calendar as the day New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd published a piece bashing Barack Obama and praising George W. Bush.This comes less than 24 hours after CNN.com did exactly the same thing over the same issue.Needless to say, Dowd's position in her column entitled "Our Mosque Madness" went completely contrary to public opinion regarding the building of an…

So last night on the show, Andy Levy pointed out that the person representing the Ground Zero mosque on Twitter made a few jabs at the Amish.This is what the Tweeter tweeted:Amish saying stop Muslims?1. What are you doing on the computer? 2. That's not very Amish 3. Shouldn't you be making butter?Later, that tweet was deleted.Which is a shame, because it didn't have to go. See, the Mosque folks…

It was deceptive. At a White House dinner with Muslims celebrating Ramadan, Barack Obama finally weighed in on the Ground Zero mosque controversy. Incredibly, he lectured Americans about the religious freedom of Muslims “that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan.”Those were prepared remarks, a clear and very deliberate effort…

Not only did MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell hail President Obama's support of the Ground Zero mosque as "politically courageous," but she seemed disappointed when, on the next day, he walked back his comments a bit. On both her Monday and Tuesday MSNBC news hours, Mitchell seemed to emphasize that Obama once again kowtowed to the conservative media on an issue he was originally on the right side of…

Radical Islam, schmadical Islam. "[N]ine years after 9/11, the fight over the mosque near Ground Zero shows how obsessed we remain with an enemy that may no longer exist."That's the argument from Time magazine deputy managing editor Romesh Ratnesar in his August 17 online Viewpoint essay entitled, "The 'Ground Zero Mosque' Debate: Exaggerating the Jihadist Threat." "The mosque's critics and…