As global coverage of the Sydney Bondi Beach shooting unfolds, a striking example of selective reporting has emerged.
JUST RECALL Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom — Season 1, Episode 3 — titled “The 112th Congress.”
The fictional newsroom team discusses ‘breaking news’ coverage of the attempted May 1, 2010 Times Square car bombing by a man called Faisal Shahzad. It talks of a Senegalese street vendor, a Muslim immigrant with poor English, who first noticed the smoking vehicle and asked a T-shirt vendor, Lance Orton, to call the police. The Sanegalese Muslim street vendor was a real person in 2010 Times Square car bombing incident.
A scene from Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom on ethics and selective reporting.
The episode shows how most American news outlets focused heavily on the bomber’s religion (Muslim) but failed to report that the person who initially raised the alarm was also Muslim.
The character of Maggie Jordan, a producer, argues that if the bomber’s religion is considered relevant to the story, then the religion of the man who helped prevent the tragedy is also relevant, to provide a balanced and less sensationalized perspective.
The team decides to be one of the few outlets to report the full story.
Aaron Sorkin’s critique of real-world media news practices, advocating for responsible and non-sensationalist reporting of facts, remains valid.
The Hero of the Bondi Beach Shooting
At the Bondi Beach shooting, the bystander who tackled an armed man and is being hailed as a hero whose actions potentially saved lives was a Muslim, a man named Ahmed al Ahmed.
Television news graphic during Bondi Beach shooting coverage.
Scores of western media outlets did not give out the name or the religion of the man, but invariably informed us that the shooters were Muslim.
It was left to Al Jazeera to tell us that the man seen in a footage from a car park running up to a shooter holding a rifle, tackling the armed man, wrestling the rifle away from him and pointing the weapon back at him, was called Ahmed al Ahmed.
Ahmed al Ahmed, hero of the Bondi Beach shooting
But there were no Maggie Jordans in newsrooms yesterday.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese praised the actions of Australians who had “run towards danger in order to help others”. That Australian had a name, has a name, and it is Ahmed al Ahmed.
Won’t hurt you to say his name. And his religion.
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P.S.: Aaron Sorkin has been one of the world’s most respected dramatic screenwriters for as long as anyone can remember — and The Newsroom was excessively dripping with idealism, but that’s exactly what we need a drip of in today’s newsrooms. 
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