Terrorist plot foiled

Five Muslims have been arrested in Melbourne - and charged with suspected terrorist activity that involved a plot to kill soldiers on a military base in Sydney.

The first report appeared in The Australian on Tuesday 4 August, the morning of the raids.

Numerous media reports followed (click here for a list) - but, as Andrew Bolt noted, in an article titled Religion is an issue when terrorism is suspected, many of the reports did not mention that the men were Muslims or that they followed the religion of Islam. He said it it is important that we know the religious motivation of these actions.

In future this lack of reporting about religion may increase... the government recently launched a project to produce a 'Lexicon of Terrorism' which - if implemented - it would see words such as 'war on terror', 'jihad', 'Islam' and 'Muslim' not used in connection with articles about terrorist attacks because they upset people.
See the Attorney-General's media release on the project.