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In November 2018, the News Punch website reported that the city of Minneapolis had set up what it termed a Sharia hotline, purportedly intended as a way for members of the public to report each other for criticizing Islam. NewsPunch.com is a rebranded version of the notorious junk news web site Your News Wire, which has a long history of publishing false, misleading, sensationalized, and typically inflammatory takes on current events. The 27 November article bore the headline Minneapolis Installs Sharia Hotline to Report Americans Who Criticize Islam, and went on to report that: That report was extremely misleading and disingenuous on several grounds. First, the hotline was actually set up in the summer of 2017, when Betsy Hodges was still the mayor of Minneapolis. Hodges lost her re-election bid that year and left office in January 2018, yet the News Punch article failed to note that Hodges was no longer the city's mayor in November 2018 and inaccurately referred to her as such throughout. The reason behind this discrepancy was that News Punch cribbed their report from a year-and-half-old WND article of similarly dubious veracity but failed to inform their audience they were simply recycling dated falsehoods. Second, the hotline was never referred to or intended as a sharia hotline (an Arabic word for the system and principles of Islamic law), nor was its use exclusive to Muslims or any other group. That inaccurate and inflammatory characterization was typical of the kind of editorializing which News Punch/Your News Wire routinely engages in. The press release referred to in the News Punch article did not once mention Islam, sharia, or Muslims. Rather, it simply explained that: The News Punch article was further misleading and inaccurate in its presentation of the concept of protected classes, claiming: In reality, the city's Department of Civil Rights said no such thing, on its website or anywhere else. Rather, the website stated that part of the department's mission was Investigating discriminatory practices against members of protected classes. This means that the context for this reference was discrimination, not hate crimes as News Punch inaccurately claimed. Furthermore, News Punch's characterization of this section of the website suggests either a lack of understanding (or willful misrepresentation), on the part of the author about the meaning of protected class in anti-discrimination law. Being a member of a protected class simply means that an individual has a group-based characteristic (age, gender, race, religion, and so on) which could potentially form the basis of discrimination against them. Therefore, every individual is by definition a member of some protected class. The following is how the National Archives, in their equal employment opportunity policy (EEO) defines protected classes: A protected class is not the same as a minority group, contrary to News Punch's characterization. When it comes to Minneapolis, the city's Division of Civil Rights outlines on its web site that its mission is to enforce state law in the form of the Minnesota Civil Rights Ordinance. That document recognizes 14 protected classes and outlaws discrimination based on membership in those classes, which comprise race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, familial status, gender identity, disability, age, marital status or status with regard to a public assistance program. Third, the purpose of the hotline was not to allow the denizens of Minneapolis to report criticism of Islam (or any other religious faith), but rather to report hate crimes -- that is, criminal acts motivated by prejudice or hatred towards the victim's perceived religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. Indeed, News Punch later changed their headline to replace the phrase criticism of Islam with 'hate speech' about Islam, although they retained all the original article's other inaccuracies and misleading characterizations.
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