OT: More coverage on the NYC Lower Manhattan mosque, and a claim that the coverage has been distorted.

Days after Community Board (CB) 1’s Financial District Committee passed a unanimous resolution in favor of the Cordoba Institute moving to Lower Manhattan to build a community center with a mosque, local and national media outlets pounced on the story. Ro Sheffe, the committee chair, was disappointed, to say the least, with the coverage.

“There has been so much inaccuracy in so many of the media accounts of this proposal,” said Sheffe last Friday. “From what we were told at the meeting - what we were hearing was a secular community center with a mosque attached. Everything we heard obviously we liked. It was unanimous.”

Though the coverage has been exhaustive - from web-only news outlets to the New York Post, even an anti-Cordoba House Facebook group with 53,000 members already opposing the group - few elected officials have taken a stance on the issue, save for New York State Senator Daniel Squadron.

“Community religious and civic organizations have been a big part of the extraordinary resurgence of Lower Manhattan,” Squadron said Wednesday evening. “The Cordoba Initiative has been a part of that rebuilding, and a new community facility would contribute to Lower Manhattan’s role as a center for cultural diversity and tolerance.”

As of press time, this paper had reached out to a number of elected officials and only Squadron returned our calls.

Still, there are other reports that the financing is coming from foreign sources, in addition to those from the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Bros. Fund.