Of the four major national news publications, the Wall Street Journal was the only one to exclude in its breaking report that the gunmen who shot up a magazine office in Paris allegedly shouted Islamic phrases while doing so.
How the New York Times reported it: “[A senior U.S. counterterrorism] official noted that, according to social media reports, the attackers did refer to the Prophet Muhammad, saying he was ‘avenged.'”
The Washington Post: “French officials immediately raised the country’s terrorism alert to its highest level and launched a massive manhunt for the suspected assailants who stormed the newspaper Charlie Hebdo — where the Arabic cry of ‘Allahu Akbar’ could be heard amid the gunfire, according to video posted by France’s state-run broadcaster.”
And USA Today: “Masked gunmen shouting Islamic phrases stormed the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo Wednesday, killing 11 people, including the editor and four cartoonists whose work has included controversial drawings of the Prophet Mohammed.”
The Journal’s breaking news report did however tie in an Islamic element. “Charlie Hebdo has often put France’s secular dogma to the test, printing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad on several occasions,” it said.
Mainstream media in the U.S. is often cautions — critics, usually on the right, say excessively so — to link acts of violence to extremist Islam.
UPDATE: After this story published, the Journal updated its own article to say, “French television showed footage of two men wearing balaclavas leaving Charlie Hebdo’s offices shouting in French: ‘We have avenged Prophet Muhammad. We have killed Charlie Hebdo.'”
