The world was shocked after the news broke of a deadly suicide bombing at the Manchester arena in England at about 10:30 PM (UK time) on Monday. The bomber, who has now been identified as UK born Libyan origin 22-year-old man Salman Abedi, reportedly blew himself up near one of the exits just as the crowd was filing out of a music concert.
The attack resulted in the death of 22 people, mostly young women and teenagers including an 8 years old girl. Reports suggested that the ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, the bomber Salman Abedi also reportedly had ties clear ties to the Al Qaeda and had also received terrorist training abroad.
The report also claimed that Abedi’s own family members had previously informed about him to the police. Also the bomb used is being thought to be too big and sophisticated and was made using material that were hard to obtain in Britain, hence it was possible that the attacker might have had possible help from others.
However, most of these pieces of information was presented (and some denied) with ‘liberal’ dash of political correctness. This behavior was nothing new as in the past too we had reported how the Berlin terror attack in December last, where a terrorist drove a truck through a busy street killing 12 people, was styled as a “lorry attack” by various media houses.
Here are a few instances:
Some publications took on themselves to highlight religion of people who were helping. A user on twitter had posted a picture of a Sikh cab driver who was offering free rides to victims. Cosmopolitan, a glamour magazine, got in touch with him asking permission to use that picture, to which the user readily gave. When the report came out people found that the magazine had used the Sikh cab driver’s picture for a “Muslim Taxi drivers took kids trying to escape the Manchester Ariana Grande concert home form free” article:
https://twitter.com/attomeybharti/status/867082219969429505
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https://twitter.com/reviewero/status/867243297898737664
The media houses also started to give new novel politically correct names to terrorist attacks. In April after a attacker had mowed down 4 pedestrians using a truck in Stockholm, the Economist had proceeded to report it as “vehicular terrorism”.
This time they found a way not to use “suicide bombing” in the reports:
https://twitter.com/TammyGeraldson/status/866904375377178625
Some could give the terror attack altogether new spin – it was about gender:
https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/867095722591756288
All such attempts were done apparently to save Muslims and Islam from backlash. To which a user had this reaction:
https://twitter.com/clairlemon/status/866841509257031680
A user also questioned Twitter over its decision to limit his account even though he had just tried to shut up a writer who had cracked an utterly distasteful ‘joke’ after the attack:
https://twitter.com/pronouncedsham/status/866796957083283457
One gave suggestions which the politically correct media could implement:
https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/867128448900354049
A media house carried an article which touted the same old cliched line:
https://twitter.com/Independent/status/866851350394671104
The positive responses to it were given a smart reply by an user:
https://twitter.com/Nick_Soapdish/status/866944297714671617
Another ‘liberal’ reaction in wake of terror attacks is “let us keep politics away” – this political correctness was also called out this time:
https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/866908971864662016