In 2015, the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) published a scathing investigation of a Rolling Stone magazine report. It detailed how the magazine fell short of “basic, even routine journalistic practice” standards in its 2014 story alleging sexual assault at the University of Virginia. As it turned out, the story was produced almost entirely on one source’s uncorroborated claims, with little to no effort made to verify even basic details of her story. The story represents one of the more famous case studies of a newsroom falling for an emotionally and narratively compelling, but ultimately false, story.
The more recent case of Mohsen Mahdawi illustrates that the media world hasn’t learned from the episode. Dozens of outlets advanced an emotionally and narratively compelling story of Mahdawi as but a peace-loving Palestinian student unjustly targeted by the U.S. government for deportation.
But like Rolling Stone in 2014, they collectively failed to exercise basic journalistic practices. The slightest bit of effort to corroborate Mahdawi’s claims would have undermined the entire narrative. But instead of any of the horde of journalists covering the story, it instead took two independent researchers, David Collier and Rachel Feldman, who recently published a meticulously documented and sourced report that challenges almost every aspect of the media narrative.
Readers should examine the full report and the supporting evidence for themselves. Suffice it to say that publicly available evidence substantially undermines Mahdawi’s narrative of his life. Collier and Feldman, who lack the resources of the mainstream media giants, needed only healthy skepticism and a little investigative effort to find these contradictions.
That stands in stark contrast with, for example, the New York Times, which wrote a 2,000+ word puff piece, entitled “He Wanted Peace in the Middle East. ICE Wants to Deport Him” (Apr. 16, 2025). Their “portrait of Mr. Mahdawi and his journey” was “based on interviews with more than a dozen friends, professors and mentors” and “lectures…posted online and earlier interviews…”
A screenshot of the post appearing to show Mohsen Mahdawi holding a rifle. Courtesy of David Collier and Rachel Feldman’s report
Yet none of the four journalists – Ana Ley, Sharon Otterman, Anvee Bhutani, nor Susan C. Beachy – managed to catch that the supposedly peace-loving Mahdawi not only mourned an Islamic Jihad terrorist, but had written about his yearning for his “beloved” rifle and appears to be seen holding a rifle in an image posted by a family member. Neither did the journalists at the Associated Press (“Detained Palestinian activist in Vermont prison says he’s ‘in good hands,’ focused on peacemaking,” Apr. 22, 2025), who uncritically platformed Mahdawi’s claims to be “focused on peacemaking.”
In exceedingly sympathetic interviews with NPR (“Mohsen Mahdawi — the Columbia student arrested at his citizenship appointment — speaks,” by Leila Fadel, Jan Johnson, and Kaity Kline, Apr. 29, 2025) and PBS (“‘This is a light of hope’: Mohsen Mahdawi says release shows democracy is functioning,” by Laura Barron-Lopez and Shrai Popat, May 9, 2025), Mahdawi accused U.S. officials of “gaslighting” Americans and Jews into believing he was antisemitic.
The charge of antisemitism against Mahdawi was declared, in no uncertain terms, to be a “smear” by MS NOW (“Rep. Becca Balint unloads on Trump administration for false claims against detained students,” by Ayman Mohyeldin, Apr. 19, 2025).
ABC News (“Mohsen Mahdawi, Columbia student freed by ICE, feared citizenship interview was a ‘trap’,” by Armando Garcia and Laura Romero, May 6, 2025) even passively allowed Mahdawi to self-righteously portray himself as opposed to antisemitism.
None apparently considered whether Mahdawi himself was doing the gaslighting, even as skepticism was plainly necessary. Mahdawi had publicly written: “Let’s for once be shrewd and politically astute, and let’s play skillfully with their minds; act meek until we gain the upper hand, and after that there will be plenty of ways to deal with it.”
Indeed, a simple search of his social media history revealed clear animus toward Jewish people, including: posting a chant celebrating the massacre of a Jewish community; telling a friend, “Soon, very soon we will annihilate the Jews;” condemning as “collaborators and traitors” Palestinian security forces for helping track down a terrorist who murdered a rabbi; and denouncing a Palestinian leader as a “servant of the Jews…”
The seeming unwillingness to consider Mahdawi’s identity as a pro-terror, antisemitic extremist stands in stark contrast with how media outlets depicted his critics. The Boston Globe (“‘A beautiful prison’: Mohsen Mahdawi seeks solace in rural Vermont as he fends off deportation,” by Paul Heintz, May 9, 2025), glowingly described Mahdawi as having an “absorbing gaze” and allowed him to describe himself as “a baby diplomat,” while simultaneously dismissing one of his detractors as “a radical Zionist group” without elaboration. That’s not journalism; that’s propaganda.
Dozens, if not hundreds, of articles have been published by mainstream media outlets about Mahdawi. At least fourteen journalists were involved just in those articles listed above. None of them caught any of the contradictory information contained in Collier and Feldman’s report.
What does that say about the current state of journalism?
In its conclusions regarding the Rolling Stone report on allegations of sexual assault at the University of Virginia, the CJR wrote, “The magazine set aside or rationalized as unnecessary essential practices of reporting that, if pursued, would likely have led the magazine’s editors to reconsider publishing [the alleged victim’s] narrative so prominently, if at all.” It further elaborated, “The problem was methodology, compounded by an environment where several journalists with decades of collective experience failed to surface and debate problems about their reporting…”
Here, too, dozens of journalists have failed to pursue essential practices of reporting that would have revealed information challenging Mahdawi’s narrative. None have bothered covering Collier and Feldman’s revelations or updating their coverage of Mahdawi.
The famed American newspaper publisher, William Randolph Hearst, once remarked: “News is something somebody doesn’t want printed; all else is advertising.” One must wonder the value of the free advertising given by the mainstream media to Mohsen Mahdawi.