The Daily Mail picks up on a story that has already done the rounds in the right-wing media in the US (the paper has in fact lifted it directly from the New York Post). It concerns the release of emails between Nazli Parvizi, commissioner of New York’s Community Affairs Unit, and Feisal Abdul Rauf and Daisy Khan, which reveal the assistance given by Parvizi with the planning application for the Park51 development – the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.

You have to read right to the end of the report before you find the information that counters the main thrust of the article. A spokesperson for Mayor Bloomberg is quoted as pointing out that Parvizi’s job is “to help groups navigate city government, and from helping prepare for a Papal visit to extending approval of a Sukkah in a midtown Manhattan park, this kind of assistance is typical of its regular work”.

But this is of course the Mail‘s usual procedure. It is able to claim that its reporting is balanced because it has quoted an opposing view, while relying on the fact that most readers won’t get beyond the scaremongering headline and the opening paragraphs.

Stand by for the usual outpouring of anti-Muslim vitriol in the comments section to the Mail‘s report.