http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/06/the-nyt-is-lying-to-readers-about-immigration-threats-from-muslim-world/
Much of the noise accompanying President Trump’s partial justification for a wall concerns the veracity of a general threat: that Islamist terror travelers in the flow of “special interest aliens” (SIAs) might easier breach the southern border without one.
Critics in the media vehemently argue that the administration is trafficking in ridiculous, baseless fearmongering. After President Trump said Muslim prayer rugs were intercepted at the border, one Vox article said migration from Muslim-majority countries only happened at “vanishingly small rates.” Another, in The Washington Post, called southern border migration from Muslim countries a “conspiracy theory.”
But perhaps the most influentially misleading article on the subject came from The New York Times. On January 18, The Times published a “Fact Check” column by Linda Qiu titled “Trump’s Baseless Claim About Prayer Rugs Found at the Border.” It essentially concluded that migration from Muslim-majority countries is an unproven conspiracy theory and, even if it did happen, no one could consider it a security threat.
The column contained numerous errors and inaccurately cited two government reports to support the story’s weak contentions. This sort of recurring problem in the media must finally be called out.