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One day after the Pulse Orlando nightclub shooting in June 2016, the web site Daily Caller published an article reporting that a sitting member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council is a Syrian immigrant who said that 9/11 changed the world for good and has consistently disparaged America on social media: By 15 June 2016, various versions of this story reported that President Barack Obama personally appointed Alawa recently to the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s Subcommittee on Countering Violent Extremism: All versions of claims about Laila Alawa appeared in conjunction with widespread reporting on the mass shooting in Orlando, with some unreliable web sites claiming that President Obama personally appointed Alawa to a DHS role: It is true that Laila Alawa's name appears on a document titled Countering Violent Extremism Subcommittee Membership Roster, but (contrary to what some outlets implied or stated) that group was neither a task force nor was it connected to any law enforcement initiative. A 9 June 2016, DHS issued a report that described a discussion-based meeting, an incubator of ideas that aimed to leverage outside expertise and new thinking to support and enhance as well as assist existing efforts. In other words, a roundtable discussion, not a law enforcement initiative, that took place well before the Orlando nightclub shooting (the linkage of the DHS subcommittee with the Orlando shootings apparently occurred because the former released its report just a few days before the latter event): As usual, the Daily Caller made hay out of selectively quoting material to create impressions unsupported by facts For example: Apparently in the Daily Caller's view, the avoidance of Muslim terminology is a really bad thing, something that Laila Alawa clearly had a hand in. But of course, the Daily Caller quoted nothing documenting how much of a hand Laila Alawa in making that particular recommendation (she was but one of 15 people on the subcommittee), nor why that recommendation was made. A bit later, though, the Daily Caller did offer their own disingenuous explanation for that recommendation: In fact, the DHS report made no mention of eschewing the use of such terms to avoid offending Muslims. Rather, it suggested that the use plain meaning American English was preferable to jargon that is often poorly understood by Americans: The Daily Caller's original report on the matter also falsely stated: In fact, the DHS report did not state that the subcommittee had instructed DHS not to use any language that might be disrespectful to Muslims, nor did the referenced passage cite any particular words to be avoid. The report merely noted that multiple reports (not just the report of this subcommittee) had advised the avoidance of any language disrespectful of fellow Americans (Muslim or otherwise): The Daily Caller also misreported another aspect of the DHS report, stating that: But the report didn't say that subcommittee members had advised the DHS to devote more attention to other groups. What the subcommittee suggested was that violent extremism and radicalization are not the province of any one group or ideology, and that the U.S. government should prioritize their efforts based on forms that pose the greatest threats to safety and security: We contacted Laila Alawa ourselves for additional details about the issue, and she confirmed that President Obama was not linked with her appointment to the subcommittee, adding that the Daily Caller had urged people to call for her to be fired from that appointment. What she was referencing was apparently a Daily Caller poll asking readers to vote on whether she should be fired: (Contrary to some reports, Alawa isn't actually employed by the DHS in any capacity; she heads a media organization called The Tempest, created and run by diverse millennial women.) The Daily Caller also referenced or reproduced a 2014 tweet from Alawa six different times in the course of their article, without once explicating what she meant by it (thereby creating the misleading impression that it intended to be disparaging): Alawa told us she didn't mean that 9/11 had changed the world for the [greater] good, but that she meant the attack had changed the world forever. She also disputed frequent characterizations of her as a Syrian refugee, noting that she was around six years old when her family moved to Japan before settling in the United States. Alawa is 24 (not 25, as is often stated), and her move to the U.S. occurred well before the recent mass exodus of refugees from the strife in Syria.
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