In less than a week of recklessness reporting, the Bay Area media has destroyed a humble Pakistani family and three other men. The carnage was unbelievable. In a frenzy race for the ratings, the media descended to Lodi, a small town south of Sacramento, in search of the “terrorist cell” they learned about in a federal criminal complaint. Everybody took at face value the veracity of an FBI affidavit and the most imaginative headlines started to come out of the editor’s brains. The San Francisco Chronicle, northern California biggest paper, went along with the FBI version with astonishing words, quotes and statements: terror cell, training with al-Qaida, how to kill Americans, terrorism inquiry to spread, number of people committed to al-Qaida have been operating in and around Lodi, to carry out his jihadi mission, targets include hospitals and food stores, and could have poisoned the ice cream.

San Francisco Bay Indymedia, 23 June 2005

See also “FBI ‘witch-hunt’ in Lodi, California”, Not In Our Name, 23 June 2005