Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Shootings in Georgia and Las Vegas: Why Do the Media Avoid Stating the Obvious When Right-Wing Terrorists Attack?



And speaking of the difficulty of ascertaining facts in news stories when the media don't want to do their job and challenge prevailing myths and dominant presuppositions (I was just talking of this in my previous posting), there's the story of not one, but two, shootings in the U.S. this past weekend with clearly related themes — in Cumming, Georgia, and in Las Vegas. I find the following commentary on the two stories and how the media are choosing to relate to them provocative:


1. For The Nation, Greg Mitchell asks why the mainstream media continue to refuse to call acts of right-wing violence terrorism when they are terrorism:

It was a busy, violent weekend for right-wing nuts in America. But will the US media dare call them "terrorists"?

2. At TPM, Josh Marshall notes that the perpetrators of both acts of violence were "birds of a feather":

It seems the couple who killed the police officers in Las Vegas yesterday and the "sovereign citizen" guy who tried to storm a courthouse in Cumming, Georgia on Friday had the same plan: to take over a courthouse and start executing public officials or (possibly in the Georgia case) holding them hostage.

3. And for Salon, Heather Digby Parton focuses on the curious obsession of right-wing propaganda sites with the totally nonexistent "terrorism" of gay activists, as these same sites completely ignore the real terrorism of right-wing gunmen gunning down public officials:

Pay no attention to the domestic terrorists who are actually gunning down their fellow Americans. They’re just exercising their Second Amendment right to foment revolution and/or kill people they don’t like. The only way terrorists can win is if some gay couples have the right to buy some stale cake and some droopy flowers for their wedding day.

All three commentators are absolutely correct with these comments, it seems to me.

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