Media Research Center executive Tim Graham tried to change the subject away from how right-wingers like him think Alex Pretti deserved to be killed by ICE agents in a Jan. 28 post:
On his show The Lead on Monday, CNN host Jake Tapper turned angrily on former Trump official Chad Mizelle when he suggested blaming Alex Pretti’s shooting in part on Tim Walz saying ICE is “Trump’s Gestapo” and Jacob Frey telling ICE to “get the F out” of Minneapolis. Tapper was so furious he accused Mizelle of hating free speech:
[…]Mizelle attempted to point out that Pretti’s activity was breaking the law by intervening with law enforcement and then resisting arrest. He suggested these were crimes like speeding, leading to more Jake snark: “No, we’re asking if like I’m breaking the speed limit — if I’m breaking the speed limit, does an officer have a right to shoot and kill me? I think that’s really what the question is.”
Tapper implied Mizelle seemed unaware of what the video of Pretti’s shooting showed, and Mizelle pointed out Pretti was wrestled to the ground by five or six officers as he resisted arrest. Tapper rudely reinterpreted his guest again:
[…]Tapper wasn’t done objecting to Mizelle blaming Minnesota Democrats for escalating the rhetoric, and then, as natural as snowstorms in January, Tapper turned it all back to January 6:
Graham did not fact-check Mizelle, and he made sure not to mention the level of right-wing rhetoric that may have contributed to Pretti’s death. Rather than offering his own opinion on whether Pretti deserved to be killed, Graham played whataboutism:
It’s surprising that Tapper would insist on no double standards, even though the Pelosi-Picked Panel standard was a riot at the Capitol should be analyzed endlessly for four years, but the George Floyd riots should not be allowed to be brought up by the Republicans as some sort of diversion, which demonstrated the media has one set of rules for Trump supporters, and another for Black Lives Matter fans. More people died in those BLM riots.
Graham didn’t explain why the Capitol riot should not be analyzed, and he did not explain his apparent belief that Pretti deserved to die. He returned to whine the next day:
Liberal media outlets often warn their audiences that conservatives are fouling our democracy by recklessly posting misinformation on the internet. But in the first seconds of Monday’s drama-queen episode of Nicolle Wallace’s Deadline: White House, they posted an AI-doctored photo of the late anti-ICE agitator Alex Pretti.
[…]But the funniest part is how Wallace preaches as she displays this fake image that Donald Trump’s team demands you not believe your eyes and ears on this case! The fake image is displayed for 35 seconds.
By contrast, Graham and the MRC completely censored the fact that the Trump White House doctored an image of arrested protester Nekima Levy-Armstrong to falsely make it look like she was crying.
Nicholas Fondacaro complained that the cast of “The View” accurately assessed right-wing motives in Pretti’s killing during his daily hate-watch of the show:
Following the surfacing of additional video of leftist agitator Alex Pretti getting violent with ICE by destroying a tail light and spitting at them, the liberal ladies of ABC’s The Viewweren’t happy. On Thursday’s episode, moderator Whoopi Goldberg whined that it was being “weaponized” while co-hosts Sara Haines and Alyssa Farah Griffin suggested it didn’t help ICE in any way. However, co-host Sunny Hostin was concerned that it was enough for ICE agents to mount an effective self-defense claim.
Despite admitting that Pretti’s parents confirmed that it was indeed their son in the video, Goldberg prefaced their discussion by saying the video “appears to show him confronting federal agents and kicking out a taillight.”
Goldberg proceeded to moan about how supporters of ICE “were waiting for something like this to happen. So, they claim this destroys the narrative that he was a peaceful protester!”
After playing a couple of soundbites of Democratic politicians trying to downplay the video, Goldberg wondered aloud: “So is this video going to continue to be weaponized against Pretti and other protesters?”
[…]“There is nothing in the second video that we’ve now seen that justifies his killing 11 days later. There’s nothing there,” Hostin agreed, following a commercial break.
Fondacaro did not dispute that the right-wing demonization of Pretti was, in fact, happening.
Jorge Bonilla grumbled that regular media weren’t buying into the right-wing narrative:
With the shift in strategy that sent Border Czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis, the news cycle is already dying down. This creates a necessity to hammer down the last bit of framing that will endure before the story disappears from the top of the news cycle completely, in favor of the next outrage. ABC World News Tonight makes an effort to freeze perceptions of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
Watch as David Muir and Matt Rivers repeat, mantra-like, “mother-of-three” and “ICU nurse” three times in under two minutes, in reference to Good and Pretti[.] […]
It is not factually inaccurate to describe Good and Pretti as “mother of-three” and “ICU nurse”, respectively. On the other hand, their lethal interactions with border enforcement agents did not occur in the performance of those roles.
The aggressively positive framing enables further omission of the extensive insurrectionist activity going on in Minneapolis. By now we’ve all seen the well-funded mobs making their way through the city. None of these networks have reported on the scope or sourcing of their funding, nor have they reported on the extent of their obstructive activities.
The aggressive frame locks perception in as the story fades from the top of A-block. Minneapolis dominated the Elitist Media’s evening news, but is no longer the consensus top story now that Homan is on the ground and securing agreements to pick people up at the county jails. And on the network where Minneapolis was the top story, ABC, the correspondent did an omnibus roundup as opposed to multiple reports on the different angles of the news there.
The story will continue to fade, barring some calamity. Until such a time as that happens, ABC will continue to shovel propaganda down their viewers’ throats.
And the killing of Pretti was not a calamity?
Graham made the same complaint in his Jan. 30 column:
The elitist media reject the language of Team Trump – calling the protesters “left-wing agitators” and deem it hate speech. But Walz can call ICE “Trump’s personal Gestapo” and Frey can tell ICE to “get the f— out of Minneapolis” and that isn’t treated as regrettable or hateful or inaccurate. Instead, TV hosts helped Frey talk about how all the left-wing agitation is “about love.”
When you spit in the face of ICE and call them something like “mother-couplers” and kick out their tail lights, feel the love. Nicolle Wallace used her language powers to describe Alex Pretti (who did all these things) as a “nonviolent bystander.”
Graham concluded:
We know what liberal journalists would like to call this kind of journalism: “shared facts.” As in conservatives can’t accept facts that everyone should accept, that everyone supposedly used to accept when there was a much weaker conservative media. ICE personnel are Nazis, and their unglued opponents are angelic. Accept it, or you spread “misinformation.” This kind of arrogance still needs to be exposed and resisted.
By being so invested in the idea of a “conservative media,” Graham is arguing that his narrative dominate — no matter how filled with misinformation that narrative is.