CNN, Other Media Under Fire For Spinning New Mexico Radical Compound Story

The main target of Donald Trump's criticisms among US media, CNN, is under fire once again. Twitter users and several other media outlets — including the Daily Caller — are grilling the news company for an article it ran about the New Mexico shantytown compound, presented in such a way that those allegedly running the compound were portrayed as victims.

"In New Mexico, where life off the grid is common, compound suspects struggled," reads the CNN headline.

The most pressing problem here is the context which led to the publication of the story in the first place.

A 3-year-old boy was reported missing, allegedly kidnapped by his father. Following an investigation, the FBI conducted a raid and found 11 children, ages 1 to 15, being kept "in squalid conditions at a compound made of garbage in the New Mexico desert," according to New York Post. The children were reportedly starved to emaciation.

The remains of the abovementioned boy were found buried within the compound.

Why would kids be kept there? Turns out, they were trained to kill, authorities say. The compound was reportedly run by Siraj Wahhaj, the son of the radical Islamic imam of the same name, who has been linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, though he has never been convicted of in relation to that attack.

The documents presented in the court state that the kids had been forced to undergo training with assault weapons to conduct shooting attacks in US schools. The local sheriff determined there was a shooting range built at the premises — something that CNN tried to handwave at as "potentially material for an earthship."

One of the lines in CNN's article that sparked particularly fierce criticism said that people who live in the region "are quick to distance the state's countercultural vibe from the compound and its inhabitants, who are accused of training the children to commit mass shootings."

"But they also fear that the publicity around a case infused with allegations of terrorism, child abuse and faith healing might contribute to a rise in racism and Islamophobia," the report reads.

While CNN spun the story under the sauce of Islamophobia and all the hardships the poor "off-the-griders" had to endure, other media outlets, such as AP, took a different stance and attempted to spin the story as a gun control/NRA issue, Twitchy notes.

"BREAKING: Court documents say man arrested at New Mexico compound was training children to commit school shootings," an AP headline on Twitter read, and a later one continued, "The Latest: Prosecutors say in court documents that the father of a missing Georgia boy was training children at a New Mexico compound to commit school shootings."

Nowhere in the AP material can the words "Islam," "Muslim," "radical" or "terrorism" be found, which sparked a hefty number of tweets specifically underscoring this connection over and over again as a form of protest against the news.

"We can't have stuff like that getting out," Twitchy comments. "Not when the NRA is gun grabbers' favorite punching bag."