Tom Olohan complained in a Sept. 16 Media Research Center post:
Time magazine came under fire after claiming on social media that the man behind an apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump had an “unclear political ideology,” leaving many in the dark about the apparent violence targeting Trump.
Time concealed Ryan Routh’s political leanings, writing Monday on X, “The suspect arrested in relation to the shooting at Trump’s golf course in Florida on Sunday has been identified as Ryan Routh—a 58-year-old with unclear political ideology, a criminal record, and a history of praising Iran and supporting Ukraine.”
The baffling tweet neglects to highlight the fact that Routh voted in a 2024 Democratic primary and has a recent history of donations to ActBlue—facts that Time itself admitted deep within the article the post links to. But why did Time make no mention of these crucially important details? Is it because such assertions might tie the left to a violent act?
Time is owned by Marc Benioff, the CEO of software company Salesforce and one of Vice President Kamala Harris’s biggest supporters. Benioff, by Time’s own admissions, donated to Harris’s 2019 failed Democratic presidential bid.
As we pointed out when WorldNetDaily did something similar, Routh’s ideology is very much unclear. .Actual fact-checkers at FactCheck.org pointed out that Routh’s political affiliations have, in fact, been all over the place; in recent years he had expressed support for Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, but also for Republican Vivek Ramaswamy. While he had once been a registered Democrat, he has had no party affiliation since 2002 — inconvenient facts that undermine Olohan’s attempt to portray Routh as a loyal Democrat. Nevertheless, Olohan complained:
But Time didn’t just show possible “bias by placement” by burying these facts in the 13th and 14th paragraphs. Time set social media users who didn’t finish the article up to believe that Routh had an “unclear political ideology.”
Imagine how many X users read the post without even clicking.
Isn’t Olohan displaying bias by omission by not reporting facts inconvenient to his political narrative? Yes, he is.
Jorge Bonilla pulled the same stunt in another post that day when ABC similarly reported on Routh’s scattered ideology, complete with Clinton Equivocation:
Not only was the “direct threat” sanitized to the point of being vague and nondescript, but its foreign element was completely excised. There is no mention of the fact that Routh is calling for Iran to commit the assassination. All of a sudden, the call for foreign intervention in our elections is not worth mentioning- a far cry from 8 years ago and the media’s hysterical coverage of Trump’s tongue-in-cheek call for Russia or China to produce Hillary Clinton’s server if they had it.
And yet, these few seconds of limited coverage were the ONLY coverage of Routh’s appeals to Iranian assassins. There were no mentions of Routh’s book on NBC or CBS, despite the failed assassination being the top story of the evening.
Bonilla also excluded Routh’s full political history since it doesn’t fit his narrative.
Bonilla continued to obsess over one minor detail about Routh in a Sept. 18 post:
Large swaths of the Regime Media have begun to move away from coverage of the security lapses that led to a potential assassin setting up unabated just outside the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. NBC and CBS continue to omit the failed shooter’s calls for Iran to assassinate former President Donald Trump.
On the plus side, there is the fact that at least CBS acknowledged the existence of a self-published book. But coverage was SCANT:
[…]MacFarlane mentions the book along with some minor disparagement of Trump but stays away from Routh’s appeal to Iran to off Trump (and Routh). MacFarlane then moves on to a quote from Routh’s son before getting reactions from former Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo and Senator Lindsey Graham. And that’s it.
CBS’s mention of the book was scant, but NBC did not mention the book at all.
Again, Bonilla omitted Routh’s support for other Republicans that undermine his portrayal of the guy as a Democrat.