WASHINGTON — The Council on American-Islamic Relations blocked a Daily Caller reporter from access to the group’s press conference Wednesday afternoon, accusing the outlet of being a “hate group.”
The noon press conference was scheduled to address Islamist attacks on American embassies in Egypt and Libya Tuesday night.
After a CAIR staffer reviewed the credentials of TheDC’s reporter, he handed the card to Ibrahim Hooper, the group’s communications director.
Hooper smirked and told the reporter, “The Daily Caller is not a news outlet, it is a hate group. You cannot come in.”
When pressed, Hooper again denied the reporter access to the press conference, but provided no basis for his accusation.
Reached via phone, Hooper again provided no explanation for the claim, saying only, “you’re not a news site, you’re an anti-Muslim hate site.”
“We have any number of press people. In fact, we often have press people who are highly critical, or ask tough questions,” Hooper went on. “But people who report for propagandist, anti-Muslim hate sites are not journalists.”
When asked for an example to support his criticism, Hooper provided none over the phone.
He later emailed TheDC with links to the liberal advocacy group Media Matters that attacked various opinion pieces appearing on TheDC’s site, but none of the outlet’s reporting.
The last Daily Caller report citing CAIR was published July 25, 2012, when a CAIR spokesperson was quoted as calling for President Obama’s presidential campaign to “be inclusive of all Americans.”
That statement to TheDC followed revelations that the president’s campaign had notably excluded merchandise marked “Muslims for Obama” from its campaign site.
CAIR was listed by the U.S. government as an unindicted co-conspirator in a scheme that provided funding to the terror group Hamas.