Actually a bit more than a week, but the title to this post is actually the subtitle to an excellent piece by John Hayward over at Human Events. It’s a great commentary regarding the hideous behavior of the LSM in its “coverage” of the Tucson shootings including the threat made this weekend by Eric Fuller. I have a snippet here but please do read the whole thing.
The Great Disqualification
A week of media malpractice comes to an unhappy end.
The media created its “Climate of Hate” narrative out of nothing. They didn’t just leap to a few hasty conclusions in the hours after the shooting, then back down and apologize to Palin or the Tea Party for slandering them. They’ve adjusted the storyline constantly in a fevered attempt to keep it alive, even as new revelations about Jared Loughner revealed he had absolutely no connection whatsoever to talk radio or conservatives.
Imagine what the media would be doing today if there had been the slightest shred of evidence that Loughner was a Rush Limbaugh fan, or belonged to a Tea Party group. The Climate of Hate narrative would be pushed even more forcefully, though it would be no less ridiculous… just as it would be absurd to hold Gabrielle Giffords responsible for the actions of her devoted follower, Eric Fuller.
Do you truly desire a more civil tone to our energetic discourse? If so, you must honestly confront what you’ve seen this week: a carefully designed and packaged narrative, whose goal was to silence conservatives by smearing them as accomplices to murder. The people responsible for producing and sustaining that narrative are hatemongers – there is no more appropriate word – and they are liberals. They had a hundred chances to back off, and they did not. They deliberate injected one of the most divisive toxins ever formulated into our national bloodstream.
Tammy, I am totally with you on this one. Also television media is the biggest influence in this country. So if you are limited for source of information you will get a bias view of reality. Like 1/2 the voters in America. We are in a culture war. Seems there are some blood thirsty people in the nation, and they are the main stream media.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tammy Bruce. Tammy Bruce said: A Week of Media Malpractice Comes to an Unhappy End http://bit.ly/dUzW8i #tbrs […]
Tammy,
John Hayward’s piece is excellent. This media circus began, tragically, when a deeply disturbed, mentally unstable young man was robbed of his ability to think and act rationally, seemingly through a horribly unlucky roll of the genetic dice, which led to his (as far as we know) undiagnosed and untreated psychological disorder(s) erupting in a sudden flash of horrific violence. But these clowns and so-called Media “malpractitioners” are purportedly clear thinking, enviably elite, nuance-loving Mensa members who (as far as we know) have no such deficiencies in cognition or willfulness. So what could possibly be their excuse?
We need to stop kidding ourselves. There was no media “malpractice” involved last week. The handling of the Tuscon tragedy was no different than the handling of any other tragedy over the past 25 years. The media succeeded in trapping our attention for a while and made money. The event doesn’t matter, content matters.. their function as a business is to make money by providing content and who knows how many books will be written !!. What is right and what is wrong means nothing compared to ratings or web site hit counts.
Just saying…. The Tuscon tragedy turned into a real boon for the media … probably saved or created more jobs that the Stimulus package.
Civility? Lead by example. You first, evil socialist scum. You’re welcome.
“A week of media malpractice comes to an unhappy end.”
Hardly.
Though I agree with the general message of the Hayward piece, I want to make something abundantly clear: what the national media has done to Tucson (along w/ this administration’s circus last week) has put peoples’ lives at risk – more lives than you are being told! – and these are people who do not have the same access to 24/7 security that Sarah Palin has. These are everyday people living in regular neighborhoods sending their kids to the local school.
They have day jobs.
They run errands and go to the same places everyone else does.
They have also seen their businesses take a nose dive as they have been implicated in all this.
Some are going to counseling.
Some even lost people they knew and loved in the massacre, and some are having to get protective orders because they have been blamed for those deaths.
Trent Humphries has not merely had dozens of angry emails as Hayward points out; he’s had death threats and so have others here. Police are involved, of course. My question is: how many of you knew that citizens in Tucson were getting death threats and needing protection? Aside from the ABC taping wherein Fuller actually threatened Trent in front of the audience while cameras rolled (which was edited out for reasons of sensitivities, I’m sure), you would have never known that Trent and his family have been receiving threats since Day 1.
Please do not get me wrong. I am very concerned about Sarah Palin’s safety, that of her family and anyone working for her. I am a strong supporter of Sarah and found her video last week and appearance with Hannity last evening to be very uplifting, sincere and dare I say – presidential. What I must point out is this: in addition to Palin being assigned blame Tucson Tea Party, Pima Co. Tea Party Patriots and Jesse Kelly have come under fire and are being used as examples by the leftists here to silence everyone who has been affiliated with these groups/campaigns. I can assure you that will not happen!
The local media has actually been fine; it’s the national media that has generated so much chaos all over the place. It happened almost immediately after the word came that Rep. Giffords had been shot. When Shephard Smith spoke with AZ State Sen. Linda Lopez, she directly put blame in the lap of the tea party, and she was indeed talking about TTP. After Dupnik threw the entire state under the bus the evening of the shootings, TTP saw an escalation in their hate mail and the threats came. After they filed charges against Fuller, the threats increased again! They are actually being blamed for Fuller threatening them. Unbelievable.
As these days and events have unfolded, there has been nonstop commentary and faux analysis among the political elites reveling in their own verbal masturbation. How many of them actually came to Tucson? Why come to Tucson and talk to the people who live here & are being threatened in their own community when there are even more disconnected sources they can rely on camped out with a mic in hand?
The national media immediately assigned blame to us and now, they do not want to be held accountable for the risk of life they have posed to real people who had nothing to do with Loughner’s madness and murders. Innocent people in this city are being used as an example of what will happen to anyone who ever dares to speak out again. Oh, and have you seen the new Facebook page called ‘Tucson Tea Party Massacre’ created by people who are largely not from this area? http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tea-Party-Tucson-Massacre/145565892163277 Do report it; several of us have including Palin Promotions and it continues to exist.
Hayward makes many great points, but I do wish to point out that if he’s going to take the media to task for their part in ‘media malpractice’ – which is certainly true – he needs to get correct info himself.
Fuller did not go off the deep end at a tea party rally Saturday as Hayward wrote in the first paragraph; he was attending a taping of ABC News Hour w/ Christiane Amanpour. I was at the taping of the first segment with a friend to support the Humphries and also new State Rep. Terri Proud whose entire commentary was completely removed from the broadcast, probably because she corrected a deputy on the panel providing misinformation on new gun laws in AZ about to go through (staff & faculty can carry in classrooms); her comments prompted boos and hisses from the audience. I applaud her for having the courage to stand up and correct him in the sea of tolerance filling that room.
And that’s what it’s going to take in Tucson: gathering our bearings in the aftermath of the horror and having the courage to stand up again. Not only was this city denied space and time to bury our dead and acknowledge the victims, their families and assess the situation properly, the media and some politicos are still trying to make this about something it is not – all the while, creating an enemy where none is warranted.
Here are some of the contents of emails the Humphries have received that are being released publicly this morning through Tucson Smart Girl Politics:
“Hey Trent Humphries, I HATE YOUR FILTHY GUTS! BECAUSE of COWARDLY PIECES of HUMAN FECES like YOURSELF and ALL THE OTHER LOSERS who consider themselves Tea Party Members, an INOCENT NINE YEAR OLD GIRL was MURDERED. You BASTARDS are STUPID, COWARDLY, and SELF CENTERED, and YOU ALL can GO TO HELL! I as a TWENTY YEAR VETERAN, will NEVER call SCUM LIKE YOU a TRUE AMERICAN. The AMERICA that I FOUGHT FOR has NOTHING TO DO with the FILTHY LIES that the TEA PARTY STANDS FOR! Go TO HELL and ROT!”
Here is another beauty;
“It should have been your children’s brains that were blown out!”
Just lovely. Makes one want to go sit on the lap of a Democrat at the State of the Union tomorrow night, doesn’t it?
Pathetic creatures ! Lisa & Tams, You know we know that they know *whew* that when all they can do is call us names and issue personal attacks that they have no case at all. When someone tells me to go to hell I know I have won my case 🙂
People who could have intervened to avert the attempted smear just sat back for days and let it build. Shame on them as well.
The leftist media really haven’t be giving the news as in the facts, but just their opinions for a long time.
Two years ago, dissent was patriotic. Today it’s hate speech. The people once sporting “Buck Fush!” bumper stickers now chide their political opposition for raising their voices against out-of-control government.
Here’s a great article, “Walking Short“. It starts out discussing Sheriff Dupnik, but moves on to the general ideology and history of American political debate. A fragment:
The call to “civil discourse” beacons sweetly to people that are troubled by hostility (and that would be just about all of us conservatives). But it’s just an opportunistic label; a call to censorship by the people that lost the last election and now want to silence their political opposition. My challenge to the Left is to practice the Golden Rule. If you really want your opponents to be “civil”, you can start doing unto others as you’d have them do unto you.
Well said.
I wish I could admire the speech but the entire memorial service was more like a campaign rally, which I thought was in poor taste [but what do I know?] What bothers me most is the way everyone is hammering Palin. She shouldn’t have defended herself; she should have defended herself sooner; she should let others defend her; she is too stupid to know what blood libel means; she is losing popularity; she should not defend others; etc. Frankly, nothing she has said or done has been acceptable from either side –which includes critical comments from Republicans, Juan Williams, Liberals, Progressives, etc. I find this tirade from all parties unacceptable, especially given some of the achievements of this conservative woman. When the teleprompter went out at the Republican Convention, she winged it–not missing a beat or a single point. I am tired of the Republican party being the less crappy party in Washington and these elitists–on both sides of the aisle–must be terrified of this woman or why else would they continue to vilify her? If my words are uncivil, I apologize.
Just donated some money to SarahPAC. I have your back, Sarah!
“If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.”
-William Tecumseh Sherman, clearly a Tea Party member.
sherman called reporters spies who snooped around army camps plucking up rumors to print as fact. the disconnect from the reality of war- something we are still very familiar with today- was glaringly apparent. civilians showed up at the first battles of the civil war with picnic baskets to watch the festivities. journalism took itself right serious but not war, a mere trifling to provide them fodder for their presses. technology may have advanced light years but human nature- and motivations- never change.
newspapers at the time of the civil war did not contain much of what we call ‘ ‘hard news’- the who, what , where- the “just the facts, ma’am”. “They were journals of opinions and political cheerleading and often served as vehicles for cultural discourse and, just as likely, cultural pretension.” what has changed except journalists’s projections about themselves- projections and pretensions that some of the public has chosen to swallow whole?
“In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.”
-Oscar Wilde, clearly a right wing extremist.
“By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.” – again Tea Bagger “Mad Dog” Wilde
now it’s rather that they give us the superior opinions of those who are over educated and at the same time completely ignorant- meaning themselves. they are the stupid drooling masses they so look down upon and think they can manipulate like sock puppets. conceiving of news as a vehicle to merely sell product, they have always focused on the lowest common denominator- lurid sensationalism sells newspapers and always has. everyone stops to look at a car wreck- no one stops to see fluffy bunnies getting petted or hungry people being fed. what i wonder at is that anyone can imagine that the reportage that Sherman had so much contempt for has changed much at all- it’s penny dreadfuls with outrageous pretensions in service to leftist propaganda, something the 4th estate has always been up to its neck in.
“In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.” – Wilde.
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