The media’s most subtle and perhaps destructive move in the promotion of their liberal narratives is omission. In the case of a shooter, the media quickly assesses whether or not the attacker’s background—cultural, ideological, philosophical, etc.—fits their anti-conservative/pro-liberal metanarrative, then either emphasizes, excuses, or blacks it out altogether. This manipulative and dishonest pattern has real-world, insidious consequences.
Monday, National Review Online‘s Charles C.W. Cooke called out the leftist media’s increasingly glaring, reprehensible, and destructive bias in its promotion of their anti-conservative shooting/murder/tragedy narrative. Cooke begins his piece highlighting the mainstream media blackout of the Arapahoe shooter’s background, saying he’d bet most readers had heard scarce mention of the political ideology of shooter Karl Pierson. The reason, of course, is Pierson’s documented leftist leanings.
The point is not that the shooter’s ideology is necessarily relevant to the story—something Cooke underscores in his piece—but rather that if Pierson leaned even a hint in the other direction, the media would suddenly find it central to its reporting.
For the most part, the media observe well the distinction between political and apolitical killings, and understand the different reactions they demand. Except, that is, when a shooting is carried out by someone suspected of being a conservative. Then, all discipline goes out the window; then, the act simply must have been caused by ideology; then, our television shows are filled with endless discussions of causes thrice removed, and we are subjected to earnest remonstrances about “rhetoric” and “climate” and, heaven forfend, “tone.”
This persistent journalistic malpractice has consequences. The media’s concerted efforts to demonize the right has real-world implications, namely the growing paranoia about supposedly volatile and anarchistic conservatives.
Perhaps chief among the insidious consequences of the attempt to turn “right-wing” into a general synonym for “despicable” has been that a significant number of Americans have taken it to heart, and now search under the bed for libertarians whenever something bad is reported in the news.
Citing Gabriel Malor, Cooke highlights a few of the more recent media-led conservative witch hunts, where the media found ways to blame conservatism or conservatives for tragedies.
Among them are the case of census-taker Bill Sparkman, who hanged himself in Kentucky (the Tea Party was blamed); the case of Joe Stack, a devotee of The Communist Manifesto who flew a plane into an IRS building in 2010 (anti-tax rhetoric was blamed); the case of Obama voter Amy Bishop, who in 2010 shot her fellow faculty members at the University of Alabama (the Tea Party was blamed); the case of misanthropic environmentalist James Lee, who took hostages at the Discovery Channel (climate-change “deniers” were blamed); and the Boston Marathon bombing, which was carried out by jihadists — after right-wingers were blamed and a non-existent and wholly coincidental link with Patriot’s Day was mooted.
And of course there was the inaccurate, bias-inspired speculative “reporting” of ABC News’ Brian Ross, who irresponsibly claimed that the Aurora shooter might be a member of the Colorado Tea Party. And the list goes on. Not just reckless and false reporting, deceptive and dangerous reporting.
The ideology of the Arapahoe shooter will not make many headlines, and probably it need not. But the imbalance and hypocrisy of the media’s coverage of the potential ideological and cultural roots of tragedies, if allowed to continue without accountability, will lead to the breeding of more bias and paranoia—a dangerous combination.
