Here's the Comments Muslims Made During a Focus Group That CBS Didn't Want America To Hear

posted on: Dec 23, 2015

By Parker Lee
Independent Journal Review

As allegations that the actions of Islamic extremist groups continue to contribute to an atmosphere of ‘Islamophobia’ in the West, many Muslims have spoken out against ISIS as “crazy criminals who are abusing our religion.”

CBS political consultant Frank Luntz sat down with a group of Muslim-Americans in order to find out how they feel about the current atmosphere in the U.S.

While CBS reports that the focus group overwhelmingly wanted “to emphasize they’re American,” sources are indicating the final segment was “manipulatively edited,” and that political consultant Frank Luntz even “silenced” some group members’ opinions.

In a Facebook post Friday, one of the participants, Sarah Harvard, talked about how she was “disappointed” by the experience:

Harvard wrote, in part:

“[Luntz] silenced me and other participants who have routinely brought up the fact the government has enacted in state violence against the Muslim community — whether that may be through entrapment cases and surveillance programs — and our concerns about institutional racism.

He shut me down when I said that President Obama and Hillary Clinton has killed many Muslims under the administration when we were discussing Trump, and ironically for a GOP strategist, he shut me down when I talked about how Democrats have enacted some of the most deadliest and discriminatory policies against Muslims…

They also cut out portions of where participants talked about media accountability when discussing Islam.”
The Intercept reported similar findings after conducting interviews with two of the focus group’s participants, who also claimed “that CBS edited out parts of the discussion where they raised their own concerns.”

The members also stated that Frank Luntz “silenced members of the group when they criticized discriminatory U.S. government policies.”

Image Credit: Screenshot/YouTube
For his part, Luntz has said he was “trying to be diplomatic,” adding:

“I did not push as much as I normally do in these sessions, and the reason why is because I wanted the voice to be unedited.”
While a longer segment was added to the CBS website, Harvard claims that this, too, “essentially was just the same thing over again.”

Source: www.ijreview.com