Coverage of the Norwegian tragedy: jumping to conclusions, absurdist claims and unanswered questions

As the days go by following the horrific slaughter at Utoya and the bombing in Oslo, the information has only become more confused and self-contradictory.

The media began with the baseless conjecture that it was an al Qaeda-affiliated group behind the attacks. The onlyevidence presented was the fact that threats had been made against Norway in the past and of course the highly reliable source that is jihadist forums.

Wired’s Danger Room ran with a story that only proposed Muslim terrorists as the culprits. Despite the same amount of evidence pointing to other interests behind the attack, they decided to run with the Islamophobic current that is all-too-common in the Western world.

I find it quite interesting that, before Breivik claimed responsibility, the perpetrators were being framed as terrorists. Suddenly, once it was established that the individual (or possibly individuals) responsible was a blond haired, blue-eyed Norwegian “extremist”.