CNN is facing steep consequences this week for airing a report which failed to meet the FCC’s mandatory Muslim otherness requirement. During a ten-minute piece on the opening of a halal butcher shop, New York resident and practicing Muslim Mohammed Amman Hassan was shown engaging in completely average activities, including paying bills and selling meats in his new shop. In flagrant disregard of FCC policy, the piece did not contain any images to make the viewer distrustful of Hassan or his religion at large, such as the burning of American flags or furious praying to a picture of Osama bin Laden.
“CNN brought this on themselves when they aired a piece about a Muslim without the mandatory four pieces of orientalist imagery,” said a representative of the FCC. “The American way of life needs protection now more than ever, and the best way to do that is to make all other ways of life seem scary and wrong. The FCC works tirelessly to enforce otherness requirements, and CNN can’t even be bothered to show a few flashes of robed men cutting off hands?”
The pending fines against CNN are only the latest in a line of violations of the otherness requirement. A piece shown on MSNBC in early June depicted Africa, but failed to show sufficient amounts of poverty or children covered in flies. MSNBC’s parent station NBC committed a similar offense during recent coverage of a gay marriage debate, which contained no stock footage of shirtless men dancing in short shorts.
Bill O’Reilly, whose show The O’Reilly Factor is the only news program currently on the air that has never fallen short of otherness quotas, was quick to comment. “Frankly CNN’s effort to make Muslims look like real people disgusts me. I’ve spent a lot of time blaming a religion of over a billion people for the actions of a handful of radicals, and I will not have the liberal media ruin it with ‘tolerance’.”
