NBC News rolled out a vicious attack on John Bolton for his work with the respected Gatestone Institute.
According to NBC’s Heidi Przybyla, “John Bolton chaired anti-Muslim think tank” and “Gatestone advocacy group’s content is part of echo chamber that includes Russian media.”
The front page article on Gatestone’s site right now is Bassam Tawil’s piece on anti-Semitism in the Palestinian Authority. Tawil’s bio reads, “Bassam Tawil is a Muslim based in the Middle East.”
Another of Gatestone’s major authors is Khaled Abu Toameh, the most prominent Muslim journalist in Israel.
A brief look through the names of Gatestone’s authors turns up,
Raif Badawi, the Saudi dissident,
Salim Mansur, a Gatestone distinguished senior fellow,
Najat Al Saied, a Gatestone Distinguished Senior Scholar,
Ahmed Charai, Chairman of Med Radio, Morocco,
Raheel Raza, The Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow
and
M. Zuhdi Jasser, President, American Islamic Forum for Democracy.
not to mention Mohammad Amin, Shabnam Assadollahi, Uzay Bulut, Sara Al Nuaimi, Nuhu Othman, Shadi Paveh, Nima Gholam Ali Pour, Nima Gholam Ali Pour, Abdel Jabbar Rawashdeh, Sohail Raza, Saied Shoaaib, Maha Soliman, Mohshin Habib, Hakim Haider, Khadija Khan, some of whom are Muslims and others, I believe, are former Muslims.
There are more Muslims writing and working for this “anti-Muslim think tank” than there are for NBC News.
NBC’s Russian claim falls apart even faster.
NBC News found at least four instances of known Russian trolls directly re-tweeting from the Gatestone account, according to an NBC News database of deleted tweets sent by Russian trolls
Four instances. Let’s compare that to MSNBC.
MSNBC star Joy Reid was the favorite political pundit of Russian trolls during the 2016 presidential election, according to Dan Abrams’ Law & Crime website.
Reid was retweeted 267 times by the “private sector Russian troll brigade,” according to the report, which cited an analysis of the raw data
Four times vs 267 times.
If getting retweeted 4 times makes you a Russian spy, NBC must be the Kremlin.
The Point’s Fact Check concludes that the NBC News story is nonsense. The Russian echo chamber news organization would be better served addressing the country’s real problems instead of engaging in dime store McCarthyism based on spurious claims that fall apart after even the briefest examination.
[…] has over a dozen Muslim authors. Zine’s report suggests that four of these Muslims are “Islamophobes”. […]