CNN.com published a story today on Rima Fakih, the Muslim Lebanese-American woman who was just crowned Miss USA, mentioning that some neocon bloggers (namely Debbie Schlussel) have called her a supporter of Hezbollah, which the U.S. classifies as a terrorist organization.
The headline: “Miss USA: Muslim Trailblazer Or Hezbollah Spy?”
CNN changed the headline on its news blog to “Is Miss USA a Muslim Trailblazer?” They then removed the story from the news blog entirely, but it’s still up on CNN’s brand new religion blog with the original headline. The religion blog, called “Belief,” was launched yesterday.
The story, by CNN’s senior editor of Mideast Affairs, Octavia Nasr, outlines the charges from neocons that Fakih works for Hezbollah.
She became the center of controversy overnight after pole dancing photos surfaced and spread across the globe just as fast as a rumor started by a U.S. neo-conservative blog that she’s a spy for the Shiite Lebanese group Hezbollah, designated by the U.S. and E.U. countries as a terrorist group.
It’s hard to gauge which claim could possibly hurt the new Miss USA more: the racy pictures or her alleged affiliation with Hezbollah. One thing is certain, the Internet feasted on the story and different groups with different agendas jumped on the opportunity this story afforded them.
Nasr also points out that, according to “blogs and posts from those with knowledge of the Middle East,” that beauty pageants and pole dancing contests “don’t match up with the conservative Islam Hezbollah preaches.”
CNN has not yet returned calls for comment.
In March, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer expressed regret after running a story with the chyron, “Dept. of Jihad?”
Other bloggers have taken issue with a Muslim woman holding the title of Miss USA. Daniel Pipes earlier this week declared that Fakih was an example of “an odd form of affirmative action.” He later clarified that he just meant that Muslim women rarely enter beauty pageants.
Late update: CNN’s “Belief” blog has now changed its headline to “Is Miss USA a Muslim trailblazer?”
They also added an update: “An earlier version of this post had a headline we thought was too provocative.”
The post was also put back up on the news blog, with the same update.
Late late update: A CNN spokesman responds:
Even before you asked about our provocative headline, some members of our team were discussing internally concerns surrounding the very same issue. In the process of editing the headline to something more appropriate, the posting was mistakenly pulled down from our breaking news blog, This Just In; and was left up on our newly launched Belief Blog. That was corrected quickly; and now you will find that the posting is back up on both blogs with editor’s notes explaining our headline change to “Is Miss USA a Muslim trailblazer?”.
