The minor skirmish over the Los Angeles Times’ characterization of “Path to 9/11″ screenwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh took an amusing turn today when the LAT defended itself in the Wall Street Journal’s letters page.

On September 18, Nowrasteh wrote in the WSJ that

The L.A. Times, for one, characterized me by race, religion, ethnicity, country-of-origin and political leanings — wrongly on four of five counts. To them I was an Iranian-American politically conservative Muslim. It is perhaps irrelevant in our brave new world of journalism that I was born in Boulder, Colo. I am not a Muslim or practitioner of any religion, nor am I a political conservative.

The LAT’s TV editor, Kate Aurthur, replied in the WSJ today:

We would like to set the record straight, one point at a time.

Mr. Nowrasteh, as he wrote in The Wall Street Journal, has Iranian parents. Which would make him Iranian-American.

Mr. Nowrasteh’s politics have been widely characterized as conservative in the Washington Post and elsewhere. Additionally, last October he appeared on a panel at the Liberty Film Festival that was named “Rebels With a Cause: How Conservatives Can Lead Hollywood’s Next Paradigm Shift. ”

In a Q&A interview with Libertas: A Forum for Conservative Thought on Film, Mr. Nowrasteh identified himself as “Islamic-American.”

As Aurthur says, one point at a time:

1) The Washington Post identified him as conservative, and that is supposed to prove … what? Gosh, now that another major newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, has published the same characterization, it must be true! Perhaps they can reference each other in case anyone has any doubt!

2) A similar lack of rigor is evidenced in the “proof” that since Nowrasteh was on a panel on a conservative (and libertarian — ask the LAT) film festival, he must be … one … of … them! Guilty by association!

3) Had Aurthur actually read the Libertas interview she cites, she would have found Nowrasteh saying “I’m probably more of a libertarian than a strict conservative.” Did she get that far? Or just cherry pick what she needed to defend the LAT, and ignore facts inconvenient to her “case?”

4) On Nowrasteh’s Islamic-American comment, Aurthur misses obvious context:

Q: Now, you can’t make a miniseries about 9/11 without depicting Islamic terrorism. Has CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) contacted you with concerns about this?

CN: No - but I wish them luck. I’m an Islamic-American, and I’m the writer and producer of the series! (laughs)

Sounds like he’s having fun with “American-Islamic” and “Islamic-American,” doesn’t it? By Aurthur’s own pigeonholing (if his parents are Iranian, he’s Iranian-American), if Nowrasteh’s parents were Islamic, he can call himself Islamic-American and not be religious.

The broader point is not Nowrasteh’s actual politics or religious practice. For all we know he is a conservative and practicing Muslim. The problem is that the LAT had absolutely no basis for identifying Nowrasteh as such — and they obviously didn’t bother to ask him. Aurthur’s embarrassingly poor “support” only proves that reporters Scott Collins and Tina Daunt had no viable evidence to justify their adjectives, and now their editor is trying to source it post hoc.

Is anybody fooled?

Technorati Tags: bias, LA Times, LAT, liberal bias, Los Angeles Times, Nowrasteh

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 8:01 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Los Angeles Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.