Media Research Center executive Tim Graham’s Sept. 17 column pushed the right-wing narrative du jour, that non-right-wing media aren’t obsessing over the purported motive of Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer the way he is:
Once the shock of Charlie Kirk’s murder began to wear off, it became easier to notice how today’s “news” media routinely fail to live up to its own pompous prattle about their work. They don’t “hold people accountable,” they don’t “uphold democracy,” and they aren’t “independent” or “objective.” They don’t produce “news” as much as narrative.
You can see this in their energetic declarations that you couldn’t possibly ascribe a leftist motive to Kirk’s shooter…and even claimed you shouldn’t try. The story was going in an “unhelpful” direction, so it should be upended.
On CNN’s weekend show Table for Five, national security analyst Juliette Kayyem demanded we all “stop looking” for a motive. The former Obama official yelled at GOP strategist Lance Trover: “The point is, who cares? A man was killed, and you have yet to say political violence is bad. Period.”
“Who cares?” What kind of callous person can’t imagine why this man’s grieving family and friends need to know why this senseless crime happened?
[…]These purveyors of willful ignorance clearly want to absolve the Left of any responsibility for inspiring violence. They want the freedom to decry MAGA “fascists” who are “existential threats to democracy.” No one should say that could inspire kooks to hurt someone.
We remember that Graham and his fellow MRCers engaged in willful ignorance when Fox News was held to account by Dominion for its lies about election fraud in general and the company in particular.
Clay Waters again whined that right-wingers who harassed out of a job people who were less than kind about Kirk’s death were called out:
Saturday’s PBS News Hour accused conservatives of doxxing the ghouls who celebrated the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA. The criticism came up in a conversation between substitute host/reporter Lisa Desjardins and PBS’s dubious extremism expert Cynthia Miller-Idriss, the far-left director of American University’s Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL).
[…]But the News Hour had quite a different attitude toward another group of “doxxers” – the lefty “sedition hunters” who hunted down Trump fans who entered the capitol during the January 6 riot, who were actually touted as “citizen investigators” by PBS: “How citizen investigators are helping the FBI track down Jan. 6 rioters.” (Idriss also appeared in that segment as an extremist expert.)
Veteran reporter Judy Woodruff cheered on the obsessive group of leftist loners who teamed up with the media’s favorite domestic surveillance organization to turn in people who entered the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021. Some “rioters” were, as the media suggests for the other side, “peaceful protesters” — people who made the mistake of just wandering in and taking selfies.
As we pointed out the last time Waters groused about this, the people who rioted at the Capitol committed crimes — and, yes “just wandering in” to a restricted building like the Capitol is a crime — while it is not a crime not to be sad about Kirk’s death. We’re surprised that Waters hasn’t yet figured out the difference. Nor did he explain why he described those who exposed the Capitol rioters as “loners” while he did not apply that same slur to the dox-happy right-wingers.
Curtis Houck was mad that the MRC’s favorite CNN right-winger got called out for his behavior:
Usually one of the more respectful and good-natured hosts in the liberal media, Kasie Hunt’s The Arena on CNN repeatedly descended Tuesday into a leftist struggle session against senior political commentator Scott Jennings, condescendingly telling him he’s “in pain” over the murder of friend Charlie Kirk but nonetheless engaged in “deeply problematic” rhetoric by (correctly) pointing out the Kirk’s alleged assassin took action against “fascist” Kirk’s “hate.”
It began with former Biden White House communications director Kate Bedingfield asserting the real problem after Kirk’s death is “dangerous” behavior from “President Trump on down…trying to use this moment to suggest that there, you know, there is inherent violence on the left.” Yes, the people being murdered need to…calm down?
Jennings promptly went nuclear amid plenty of cross-talk from Bedingfield:
“Why did I do it? I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” He — he has a flat — that is — that is the message that the shooter Tyler Robinson sent to his roommate. That is what he said. He also engraved the word, “hey, fascist catch” on the bullet. For ten years, we have heard nothing from the left but that Donald Trump is a fascist. Republicans are Nazis. Authoritarians destroy the Constitution. Bloodbath. Dictator for a day. And he wrote it on the bullet. And he’s been obviously marinating in some kind of information that radicalized him based on what he heard in the air in this country.
Predictably, Bedingfield and Hunt admitted to none of that. Instead, the former invoked the talking point of the Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman being gunned down in June at her home by “a stated Trump supporter,” which Jennings was exasperated she would “equate the two” and not entirely clear.
Yes, Houck thinks a murdered Democratic politician is nothing but a “talking point” — certain not an actual human.
Meanwhile, another Houck post gloated that “ABC chief national correspondent Matt Gutman took to X and not on-air to offer his attempt at apologizing for fawning Tuesday afternoon over text messages between the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination and his trans lover as ‘lovingly’ stated, ‘very intimate,’ and ‘very touching.’”
Alex Christy wrote up a Ted Cruz meltdown:
Sen. Ted Cruz brought some much-needed sanity to CNN on Tuesday when he joined The Source host Kaitlan Collins, who insisted that we still do not know why Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin did what he did.
As part of a larger back-and-forth where Cruz claimed that the fact that too many people on the left believe that Kirk’s killer was on the right and deny the role that his pro-trans ideology had in the shooting, Collins claimed, “Okay. Senator, but—but one moment, because you said a lot there. And we don’t have a motive yet. We don’t know yet. We’re waiting. Obviously, we’ve heard what the governor’s had to say, what the FBI director said today.”
That set Cruz off, “Of course, we know. But come on, we don’t have a motive yet? We don’t—we don’t have a motive yet? Really? Really? That’s CNN’s position?”
[…]The point of Cruz’s retort wasn’t to suggest that Collins actually believes the shooter fired into the air and hit Kirk in an inadvertent act of ceebratory foolishness. It was to point out the absurdity of saying we don’t know.
Intern Isaac White dutifully regurgitated the day’s narrative about motive:
On Tuesday, Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray announced the charges being pressed against suspect Tyler Robinson and what drove him to murder. During Katy Turs Reports coverage, MSNBC contributors Ken Dilanian and Chris O’Leary were reluctant to connect Robinson’s left-leaning ideology to his motive for allegedly murdering Charlie Kirk.
In the week following the tragedy, the left had admitted to there being a heated political climate and the existence of political violence coming from both sides, and now they could no longer deny that Robinson’s alleged actions may have been politically-charged. But they continues to doubt if his politics were a definitive motive for the killing.
[…]MSNBC doesn’t want its audience to believe their own eyes: the suspect was, according to his mother, leaning further into liberal ideology and there is evidence the murder was politically-charged. Yet there is no clear motive to be found!
White returned for another post:
Anchor Leland Vittert pointed a giant mirror at the left on Tuesday’s edition of NewsNation’s On Balance. While the mainstream media has tried to deny a connection between suspect Tyler Robinson’s political leanings and his alleged murder of Charlie Kirk last week, Vittert was unafraid to point out the bias that stained their coverage.
[…]Vittert then featured a montage of various moments (including more clips popularized by NewsBusters) from CBS, CNN, and ABC where the existence of Robinson’s motive was doubted or attributed to the right. And he could have included many more.
He also highlighted one of the most blatant attempts at a biased cover-up: “That last clip, where CNN couldn’t figure out if it was clear, came moments after the press conference that clearly laid out the shooter’s beliefs in his own words. And people at CNN are still trying to deny it.” Time will tell how long the likes of CNN will be able to keep up their disingenuous coverage of the suspect in custody. Hopefully, the prosecution will be able to prove Robinson’s beliefs, motive, and actions beyond a reasonable doubt.
White concluded by gushing: “Keep telling it, Vittert. Kick the crazy out of town, and we’ll see who’s still left around.” White didn’t disclose that Vittert is a right-wing partisan who previously worked for Fox News and that NewsNation is a right-leaning channel.