The Travel Ban is Still a Muslim Ban, and the Press Should Say So

By Jon Allsop

The inclusion of North Korea and Venezuela in President Trump’s latest border security directive has reignited a debate in the media: When does a Muslim ban stop being a “Muslim ban”? The latest round of coverage shows reporters and editors have hedged their bets.

The addition of two non-Muslim-majority nations doesn’t make the directive any less of a Muslim ban, as recent stories have noted. But the same reports struggled to capture that impression in headlines and shorthand descriptions. Leads in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and Reuters variously called the new directive a “travel ban” and “travel restrictions,” and retroactively applied the same antiseptic language to the policy’s previous—more overtly anti-Muslim—incarnations.

The Times:

President Trump on Sunday issued a new order indefinitely banning almost all travel to the United States from seven countries, including most of the nations covered by his original travel ban, citing threats to national security posed by letting their citizens into the country.

Click here for the full article.

Source: Columbia Journalism Review.