All The News That's Fit To Fake

I meant to note this story posted by Michelle Malkin yesterday, but never got the chance. Let's summarize for those who don't want to click on the link: Dateline NBC wants to film a piece on anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias here in the United States, and they're trying to get Muslim men dressed in traditional garb (and apparently women as well) to attend non-Muslim gatherings here and see if they experience any discrimination. For the purposes of doing this investigative report, they want to target things like football games and NASCAR events.

Of all the dumb ideas... there are several issues I have with this.

Look, Dateline and its ilk of trashy "news" magazines essentially try to create the news as much as report it, so it's not like this is surprising at all. But one question would be what NBC would choose to air. If they sent people to nine NASCAR events and had three instances of discrimination, how much do you want to bet that those instances would get repeated airplay?

Even more than that, what does it say that Dateline's focus here appears to be on proving that we're biased here in the United States... yet how many stories has Dateline done or will it do regarding the religious repression by Muslims in the Middle East of other faiths? Here, you have the freedom to worship as you wish, and the government protects you from discrimination or acts of violence against you based on your form of worship.

Michelle had some follow up posts, notably this one, which noted that NBC was confirming their interest in doing such a story and blogospheric reaction. I particularly enjoyed the last email noted, where the guy had a suggestion for continuing "staged" events by NBC. Even better was this post by Lorie Byrd at Polipundit...

I wonder if they would consider sending a professor wearing an “I Love W” button and an American flag pin into the faculty lounge at Harvard or some other liberal ivory tower with a hidden camera. I would love to see that experiment. I can’t imagine anyone at NBC doing that one. Maybe John Stossel at ABC, though?

Instapundit has similar reader comments as well...

And reader Eric Hall offers a new assignment: "Dateline NBC ought to take some Christian-looking people to Riyadh and see how things work out. Don't forget the bikini-clad sister."

The Cranky Insomniac gives a little more context here...

Various people have pointed out that this is particularly bizarre given that NBC Sports currently splits the broadcast rights to NASCAR with Fox, with Fox airing the first half of the season (which is where we are now) and NBC the second half. However, this is the last year of that contract, and ABC/ESPN will televise the races next year. (Also, NBC's coverage is greatly inferior to Fox's in the eyes of most NASCAR fans, for whatever that's worth.)

If I ran Fox, I'd be figuring out who NBC's Muslim "ringers" were and putting a not-so-hidden camera crew all over them during the race. This would totally blow NBC's story out of the water.Also, throughout the broadcast of the race I'd be replaying clips of the original faked Dateline story about the trucks catching on fire and making snarky comments about keeping the Dateline crew away from pit road.

Additionally, now that NASCAR fans are aware that this might happen, I would think the odds of there being a confrontation are quite slim. (I should say that I think the odds would be slim regardless, but now even more so.) This would also kill Dateline's story, since the producers need to prove their "thesis" about bigoted white people (particularly NASCAR fans, obviously) and poor, oppressed Arabs.

My theory -- Dateline wants to fill the market niche for made news, now that Dan Rather's semi-retired. Also, NBC wants to lure Rather as revenge for CBS grabbing Katie Couric, and they wanted to show him that they're as cutting edge at making up stories as he is.