Graham versus the truth

Unaccustomed as I am to defending Herald columnist Joe Fitzgerald, I nevertheless find this too funny — and sad — to pass up.

If you go to Michael Graham’s Web site right now, you will find this:

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2005

THE $1,000 THROW-DOWN IS ON! Today on 96.9 FM TALK, I made this challenge to Joe Fitzgerald of the Boston Herald, who claimed in print today that I’ve said “All Muslims are terrorists:”

If Mr. Fitzgerald can find any record in print, broadcast or anywhere else, that I have ever said “All Muslims are terrorists,” I will donate $1,000 to the charity of his choice. Any charity, up to and including the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The challenge has been issued, and I hope Mr. Fitzgerald’s sense of journalistic ethics inspires him to take it up. I will gladly make this donation if he can find anywhere I have made the statement he attributed to me…but he won’t. Because I’ve never said it, and I never would.

There is a slight problem here: Fitzgerald never quoted Graham as saying that. Rather, in a Wednesday column headlined “No room for ethnic hatred on Hub talk radio dial” (sub. req.), Fitzgerald wrote that Graham’s new employer, WTKK Radio, probably …

… thought Michael Graham would be worth a shot in Boston, given his track record, knowing he’s capable of muddying our cultural waters a little bit more by trashing all Muslims.

When he tried that at his last job in Washington, D.C., repeatedly denigrating Islam as “a terrorist organization,” his bosses wisely pulled him off the air and told him to scram, which is how he wound up here, where the industry’s standards have sunk so low that some signals seem to come from the gutter.

Yes, there are Muslim savages, such as the terrorists who beheaded blindfolded captives on live TV while proclaiming, “All praise to Allah!” But does that mean every practicing Muslim has bloody hands, too, as Graham implied?…

According to Graham, it’s simple: There is no line. Rather than zeroing in on elements of a group, you just hate the whole group. It’s easier that way, and, besides, it’s good for ratings.

All Muslims are terrorists? Please.

You will note that nowhere does Fitzgerald directly quote Graham as saying, “All Muslims are terrorists.” (And if you’re wondering whether the print edition of Fitzgerald’s column is different, I checked: It isn’t.)

What Fitzgerald is doing, of course, is recounting the events that got Graham fired from his last radio job, at WMAL Radio in Washington. Here is a passage from the Washington Post account of that fiasco (via Mark Jurkowitz):

According to WMAL, Graham said “Islam is a terrorist organization” 23 times on his July 25 program. On the same show, he also said repeatedly that “moderate Muslims are those who only want to kill Jews” and that “the problem is not extremism. The problem is Islam.”

Read that passage again. Does Joe Fitzgerald accurately summarize the views Graham expressed on that occasion? Absolutely. I’d say Fitzgerald ought to collect on that $1,000 reward right now.