Centrist Democrats opened the door for anti-Muslim attacks on their party’s nominee in Michigan — finding common cause with right-wing bigots. The post CBS News Spins El-Sayed’s 9/11 Tweets Into a Manufactured Anti-Muslim Scandal appeared first on The Intercept .
Page A2From§Eachthe early evening edition — 1 September 2026
CBS manufactures an anti-Muslim scandal from El-Sayed's tweets, then asks if the Jewish vote costs him the seat.
As it ran on the front
Watch the sleight of hand. A guy running for Senate posts things on the internet about September 11th — an event that happened when he was a kid, like it did to most people his age — and a cable network turns those posts into 'a manufactured anti-Muslim scandal.' Not my phrase. That's the headline. CBS didn't find a scandal. They built one, the way you build a stage set: fast, cheap, and only sturdy enough to last through the news cycle.
Then, a few days later, a different outlet — one that actually covers Jewish communities for a living — runs a piece asking whether Jewish Democrats could cost this same candidate his Senate seat. Read those two headlines back to back and tell me what subject they're actually covering. It isn't his tax plan. It isn't his healthcare position. It's his religion, examined from two directions by two newsrooms in the same week, as if that's the only relevant fact about a man running for federal office.…
…(cont) I've watched this movie before. It doesn't matter what the candidate actually said or didn't say — once the story becomes 'can a candidate like this win,' the campaign stops being about anything he'd do in office and starts being a referendum on whether voters can get comfortable with who he is. That's not journalism asking hard questions. That's journalism doing the work of whoever doesn't want this guy to win, and getting paid by the click either way.
Here's the part that should bother you even if you've never heard of Abdul El-Sayed: this isn't really about him. It's a demonstration. It's a test run for what happens to the next candidate, and the one after that, who doesn't fit the shape newsrooms are used to printing. Manufacture the scandal first, then let the horse-race piece ask if his identity is a liability, and you've built a machine that can be pointed at anybody standing next to a microphone with the wrong name. The tweets are just this week's excuse. The machine doesn't care whose excuse it uses next.
“One network manufactures a scandal, another asks if his religion costs him the race, and neither one covers what he'd actually do in office. That's not coverage, that's a background check dressed up as journalism.”
“CBS covers newsworthy statements from candidates, that's just good journalism, and asking about the electorate's makeup is standard horse-race analysis — I'm not saying it's the same as the scandal piece, I mean, I guess structurally it kind of is, forget I said that.”
The receipts
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.