The Media Research Center has been doing its best to portray the man who shot a guard at the Familiy Research Council headquarters in Washington as a mainstream liberal. For instance, Brent Bozell used his Aug. 17 column to call the incident “liberal violence” and the shooter “a gay-left activist,” and he delcared that the Southern Poverty Law Center’s designation of the FRC as a hate group “is obviously now causing real harm.”
In an MRC press release, Bozell ranted that the shooter is a “militant, hate-filled left wing wacko” and that “the liberal media have created a culture that not only tolerates, but validates anti-Christian and anti-conservative violence.”
But the situation was much different when Scott Roeder shot and killed Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller. Despite his numerous contacts with long-established anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, the MRC bent over backwards to disconnect him from the mainstream anti-abortion movement and deny that the right’s anti-abortion rhetoric played any role in creating Roeder.
In a June 2, 2009, column, Bozell called Roeder an “unhinged vigilante,” insisting, “In the very heart of the pro-life community, there is nothing they wanted less than another shooting of an abortionist.” Bozell also denied that “the mere act of denouncing Tiller as a killer of babies – as if he were instead removing tumors – is an invitation to terrorism and murder.” A few weeks later, Bozell complained about the media’s alleged “theme that describing abortion as the death of a baby enables terrorism.”
CNS’ Penny Starr insisted in 2010 that Roeder is “a mentally unstable man” despite the fact that Roeder did not mount an insanity defense at his trial and a psychologist hired by the defense found Roeder competent to stand trial.
The MRC at one point even seemed to justify Tiller’s death as the equivalent of the abortions he performed. In a June 1, 2009, MRC item by Scott Whitlock taking offense at one news report stating that “The abortion debate turns deadly”: “The abortion debate turns deadly? If the procedure is successfully performed, isn’t abortion always fatal?” (Whitlock later took offense at the news report failing to “point out the specific pro-life organizations that have strongly rejected this violent act.”)
So, yeah, when Roeder murdered Tiller, the MRC was doing pretty much the opposite of what it’s doing now in the FRC shooting. Double standard much?