Is the Media Adding Gasoline to the Anti-Muslim/Anti-immigrant "Fire"?

So nice to see so many stories in the media on and after 09/11 about how anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant we are as a nation.

Caught two such articles on MSN.com this morning:

"Muslims face growing bias in the workplace"    and    "Americans' suspicions frustrate Muslims"

and it made me wonder if the media is to blame for perpetuating this myth that America is an anti-Muslim/ anti-immigrant nation?

Now I don't doubt some bias and discrimination happens to them, but somehow I don't think it occurs as wide-scale as they would like us to believe. So this "anti-Muslim" attitude the media attributes to the opponents of the Ground Zero Mosque and the one yahoo down in Florida with a 50 member church. Can you REALLY use those two examples to charge the United States as a whole with an anti-Muslim sentiment? NO!

First, the Mosque at Ground Zero - I don't care if people wanted to build a Mc Donald's there; I'd still be offended and think it didn't belong. The only things that should be built there are the two towers again and a memorial for the victims. Nothing else. No nightclubs, no churches, no restaurants - NOTHING ELSE.

And secondly, the creepy mustached dude from Florida, threatening to burn the Quran - the media created that freak show. All the needed to do was ignore his nonsense and it would have gone away, but they had to give him attention and give it to him again, so his story blew up on the national stage. There was no reason for that to get that far. The media blew it up more than they needed to because they hoped to link him with Tea Partiers.

As for the media claiming "anti-immigrant feelings are on the rise" - the majority of us ARE immigrants ourselves, children of immigrants or (great) grandchildren of immigrants. Doubtful we'd be anti-ourselves or anti-family. I have yet to hear someone say "I don't like immigrants. They all need to go home and don't belong here". Now I know A LOT Of us immigrants, children of immigrants and (great) grandchildren of immigrants are anti - ILLEGAL immigration. We're not mad at the fact they are immigrants - we're mad at the fact that they chose to ignore rules that the rest of us had to follow and are getting rewarded for it. That's all. Nothing to do with race, culture, home country origin or mother tongue. It's like if I stood in line for 8 hours to get into a concert and someone cut in the front of the line. Not only did they let him in, but gave him a front row seat and a free drink. And then on top of everything, I was called names for objecting to his 5-star treatment when I bought an expensive ticket for my last-row seat and paid $10 for a sip of soda. I don't care if he's white, black, tan, orange or a woman - that's not going to change the reason why I'm mad.

Now I may be blinded by my whiteness (as my liberal friends like to say), but personally, I don't see ANY anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant sentiments, aside from what I see on the news. Again, I don't doubt it happens - as it does to ALL of us at one point or another. I just feel that the media blows it out of proportion, as they do with all things, like with "racism". It's unfortunate that for awhile now, perhaps even before I was born,  the news doesn't report the news, but chooses to perpetuate their own news.And it's sad they use those people to further their own agenda. It's even sadder that those people don't even realize it.

The media, like the Obama Administration, is working hard to pit us against one another. It's harder to hold them accountable if we're all distracted with squabbling over petty things like children and unfortunately, it's working. The media knows how to play us well and we're falling for it.