Photo from jewishcolorado.org
A horrific act of violence shattered a peaceful Sunday gathering of Jewish Americans in the city of Boulder, Colo. At least a dozen people, ages 25 to 88, were attacked and burned while calling for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. The assailant, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, reportedly shouted “Free Palestine” as he hurled Molotov cocktails and wielded a flamethrower.
This was not an ambiguous incident. The FBI has labeled it a terror attack. Colorado’s attorney general indicated it had all the hallmarks of a hate crime.
But the way this event was covered—or in some cases, not really covered—raises deeper concerns about the stories we tell ourselves as a society and the stories we choose to ignore.
Some major media outlets got it right. Others faltered. CNN, at one point, had placed quotation marks around the word peaceful in its description of the Jewish gathering, as if the elderly protesters were possibly engaged in violent agitation. The BBC initially left out the attacker’s own shouted words. CBS ran a vague headline that suggested a random act of street violence. An NPR affiliate in Colorado likewise omitted any mention of antisemitism in its headline.
These choices matter. Journalism is not just about relaying facts. It is about constructing a framework through which the public interprets events. When key facts are left out, when motive is blurred or context is erased, it sends a message and creates room for false and harmful narratives. In this case, the coverage sometimes sent a troubling message—that attacks on Jews are less urgent, less clear or less deserving of public attention than other forms of hate.
As someone who has spent a career in criminal justice and homeland security, I have seen firsthand how dangerous it is when bias of any kind is allowed to seep into our public discourse unchecked. When hate is misidentified or ignored, it becomes harder to fight. And when Jews are targeted but the targeting goes unnamed, it chips away at something foundational: our shared sense of justice and moral consistency.
I do not believe that most journalists are motivated by malice; I believe that many are deeply committed to fairness and truth. But even the well-intentioned can fall into patterns of selective attention, especially when those patterns are reinforced by cultural assumptions or ideological blind spots. Antisemitism does not always announce itself with loud slogans, visible symbols or violence. Sometimes, our silence allows it to hide and even grow. Sometimes it is a matter of who we empathize with and who we do not.
So, what can we do?