The Evil of Selective Information

right to make a rational analysis of others’ statements, but they do not have the right to label others as conspirators. Doing the latter is little better than resorting to abusive language. This was an example from the medium of the printing press. Now, consider an example which was reported extensively both in print and the electronic media. A Muslim chaplain, Tahera Ahmad, of Chicago’s Northwestern University was on board a United Airlines flight on May 30, 2015. During the flight she asked for an unopened can of soda and says she was told, ‘Well, I’m sorry. I just can’t give you an unopened can, so no Diet Coke for you.’ When the man next to her got an unopened beer can from the in-flight service, Ahmad said she was told by the flight attendant: ‘We are unauthorized to give unopened cans to people, because they may use it as a weapon on the plane.’ On her Facebook page, Ahmad claimed this flight attendant was “discriminating against me.” She used the hashtag Islamophobia is real for the post. Muslim activists then took to the social media to brand the alleged incident as an inexcusable act of bigotry and said they would boycott United Airlines, basing their decision on what they interpreted as open discrimination.2 This incident is so trivial that it was almost a non-event, but posted as it was on Facebook by the above Muslim passenger, it became sensational news for the media, and was reported on a large scale. It is such reporting which appears in the media almost on a daily basis, which has