Of massacres & media myths

[Big Don]

[h=1]Of massacres & media myths[/h] By GABRIEL MALOR
Last Updated: 10:53 PM, July 23, 2012
Posted: 10:09 PM, July 23, 2012

NY POST EXCERPT:
Media assumptions that violence is right-wing are routine — and routinely wrong.

On Friday morning, Brian Ross of ABC News speculated on live TV that James Holmes, the accused killer in Aurora, Colo., was a member of the Tea Party. A few hours later, Ross posted a short apology online; Holmes had no Tea Party connection.
Ross’ unfounded speculation wasn’t unusual (although the speed of his apology was). This was merely the latest case of media commentators jumping to the conclusion that violent attrocities should be attributed to members of the political right. Let’s look back at how often the media has falsely invoked Tea Partiers and other “right-wing nut jobs” in the past few years.
* September 2009: The discovery of hanged census-taker Bill Sparkman in rural Kentucky fueled media speculation that he’d been killed by anti-government Tea Partiers. In fact, he’d killed himself and staged his corpse to look like a homicide so his family could collect on life insurance.
* February 2010: Joe Stack flew his small plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. The media immediately suggested that the anti-tax rhetoric of the Tea Party led to the attack. In fact, Stack’s suicide note quoted the Communist Manifesto.
* That same month, a professor at the University of Alabama, Amy Bishop, shot and killed three colleagues at a faculty meeting. The gun-loving Tea Party came under immediate suspicion. But Bishop was a lifelong Democrat and Obama donor.


END EXCERPT
There is no media bias
There is no media bias...

 

[WC_lun]

Brian ross was an idiot doing this, just like the site that released the story shortly after the massacre about the shooter being a democrat. If you guessed that was Brieghtbart's site, then you would be correct. Idiocy like this has no political leanings.

 

[Steve]

Defensive much?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc2o8ywKqos[/youtube]


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[billc]

Since the OWS movement has shown more than a small willingness to engage in violent acts, including the attempt to blow up a bridge in Ohio, as well as the protesters at Nato and the G8m it is funny that they went to the Tea Party to check the names. It isn't surprising, just expected at this point. The Tea party smears will continue even though they have been nothing but peaceful and civil in their activities.

 

[granfire]

Defensive much?

[yt]Wc2o8ywKqos[/yt]


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there

 

[shesulsa]

Oi. Didn't he say he did a quick internet search and found the most recent activity on the name? He also said, IIRC, that it might not be the same man. He probably googled the name and got what he did and they STUPIDLY put it on the air. I can *kind of* understand - it makes sense they would grasp at any political motivation as this could be considered terrorist proportions. But it would have been prudent to hold off on that.

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[WC_lun]

Even if the suspected shooter was a Tea Party member, unless it has a proven link to the story, it should have never been mentioned. It was sloppy reporting at its' best. It is hard for me to take this condemnation seriously though, when Billi's go to site is guilty of much the same thing, yet we do not see a thread about that started. It just seems there is a double standard at play here.

 

[billc]

This was Breitbarts initial report...

http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/DA04KV5O0

notice the time:

AP 7/20/2012 12:31:21 PM

not one mention of the guy being a democrat. I think I remember the article that mentioned that but it was in one about Brian Ross and Snuffleupagus from ABC news trying to pin it on the tea party. I am looking for that one right now.

By the way, it isn't a "double standard," if you want to post about Breitbart, post about Breitbart, I'll leave that up to your side.

Found one mentioned on the lefty sites. It is by Joel Pollack...here is how he handled it...

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Govern...ting-Suspect-James-Holmes-Registered-Democrat

EXCLUSIVE: CONTRA ABC NEWS, DARK KNIGHT AURORA, CO SHOOTING SUSPECT JAMES HOLMES COULD BE REGISTERED DEMOCRAT - UPDATE: NOT REGISTERED?

James Holmes, the suspect arrested in connection with the mass shootings at a screening of the new Batman movie early this morning in Aurora, CO, could be a registered Democrat, according to documents obtained by Breitbart News. Earlier, ABC News' Brian Ross and George Stephanopoulos speculated on Good Morning America that Holmes was a Tea Party member, based solely on a name appearing on a Tea Party website.

The James Holmes for whom Breitbart News has obtained documentation is 25 years old (the suspect has been reported as 24 years old). He has links to addresses in both Colorado and San Diego, where his mother has been reported to be from, according to news reports. He was issued a traffic citation in 2011--his sole run-in with the law. The same is true for the suspect arrested in connection with the shootings, according to reports. Update: Fox News reports that the suspect has a California-issued social security number, as does the man in the documents obtained by Breitbart News--a significant correlation, assuming the sources are independent.
Furthermore, the James Holmes for whom records were obtained by Breitbart News registered as a Democrat on June 14, 2011. He registered from an address in La Plata County, Colorado, and his status is listed as "inactive."
Breitbart News has not confirmed that this James Holmes is in fact the suspect, but the details above appear to match closely. There are certainly more facts in our documents than in ABC News' irresponsible speculations.
Update (12:21 EDT): I remind readers that we have not, as of yet, confirmed that this James Holmes is in fact the suspect. Attempts to reach this James Holmes by telephone have not been successful. In addition, it appears there are several individuals using the same social security number listed to the James Holmes in our documents. We have also obtained documentation for a James Holmes in Aurora, CO whose address may match that of the suspect but whose date of birth and voter registration cannot currently be obtained.
Update (12:49 EDT): Newly-released information on the suspect's birthdate (which, as indicated in our initial report, was a slight mismatch), combined with new details Breitbart News has obtained about the suspect's likely addresses, together suggest that the suspect may, in fact, not have been registered to vote.

If you look at the Lefty web sites they say Breitbart said he was a democrat, but reading the above article the story is a lot different.

 

[billc]

Here is one of the OWS types who just plead guilty to trying to blow up that bridge...hmmm...why didn't Ross and snuffleupagus from ABC look to OWS to blame first, since they actually are more prone to actual violence.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Govern...-Occupy-Cleveland-Bomb-Plotters-Pleads-Guilty

[h=2]One of the five men accused of attempting to blow up a bridge in Ohio to make an Occupy-themed political statement has pleaded guilty. Anthony Hayne, who has a prior record for theft, will testify against his four co-conspirators in exchange for leniency at sentencing.[/h]The five men were arrested on April 30th after they set what they believed to be a bomb containing C4 explosives at the base of a bridge. They attempted to detonate the device using a cell phone, but the bomb was actually an inert mock-up sold to them by undercover FBI agents. Attorneys for the men have claimed they were entrapped by an FBI informant.

 

[WC_lun]

See Billi, that's my point. If the action is wrong it should be condemned no matter who's side you are on. Otherwise it looks like you are excusing it when someone from your "side" does it, but condemning it when the other "side" does it. That makes it look like you really don't have a problem with the tactics being used, but rather the person's political affiliation using it. As history has shown that path leads to some very ugly places. Let's just admitt that there are people that do unsavory things because they are fallable people, not because they have a particular political affiliation. Once that is done, then we can work on reducing the influence of those people in politics and focusing on actually improving this country through the use of diologue and compromise. Otherwise it is just a bunch of people calling each other names and geting nothing done...you know, like our current congress.

 

[billc]

No, Breitbart's Joel Pollack covered the story and explained what they had and what they didn't have as they went along. More to the point, his article was in direct response to ABC falsely reportiing the man as being part of the Tea Party. Keep in mind, these fallable people only tend to screw up in one direction, always targeting conservatives for the violence rather than the actual culprits.

 

[billc]

An article on the views of police officers on private citizens carrying firearms for protection...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444405804577560901492837174.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

Take the annual survey by the National Association of Chiefs of Police of more than 20,000 chiefs of police and sheriffs. In 2010 it found that 95% believed "any law-abiding citizen [should] be able to purchase a firearm for sport or self-defense." Seventy-seven percent believed that concealed-handgun permits issued in one state should be honored by other states "in the way that drivers' licenses are recognized through the country"—and that making citizens' permits portable would "facilitate the violent crime-fighting potential of the professional law enforcement community."
National surveys of street officers are rare, but they show officers to be overwhelmingly in favor of law-abiding civilians owning and carrying guns. A 2007 national survey of sworn police officers by Police Magazine found that 88% disagreed that "tighter restrictions on handgun ownership would increase or enhance public safety." In the same survey, 67% opposed tighter gun control because the "law would only be obeyed by law-abiding citizens."

Regional or local surveys show similar patterns. For example, a 1997 survey conducted by the San Diego Police Officers Association found that 82% of its officers opposed an "assault weapons" ban, 82% opposed a limitation on magazine capacity, and 85% supported letting law-abiding private citizens carry concealed handguns.

Mr. Bloomberg's claims about guns are mere hypotheticals, apparently based on guesses and little knowledge of what happens in real life. He also uses inaccurate, scaremongering terminology that suggests he doesn't even understand how guns operate.
He seems to dismiss the idea of letting people defend themselves when he speculates that if concealed-handgun permit holders had been present at the Colorado attack, the crossfire between permit holders and the killer would have been even worse than the mass shooting itself. But we have the evidence of multiple occasions when mass shootings were prevented by civilians.
One incident took place at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs in December 2007. There were 7,000 people inside when an armed man came on the church's property and began shooting, killing two people and wounding others. What stopped him was a parishioner who had permission to carry her permitted concealed weapon on church property. Despite this and other incidents—preventing shootings in schools, a mall and other public places—there is no case on record of a permit holder accidentally shooting a bystander.
Mr. Bloomberg keeps pushing for renewing the federal ban on assault weapons, which expired in 2004 after being enacted during the Clinton administration in 1994. What the mayor ignores is that no published peer-reviewed research by criminologists or economists—even that funded by the Clinton administration itself—found reductions in violent crime from the 1994 ban. It is particularly noteworthy that the law's sunset in 2004 was not followed by the bloodbath that Mr. Bloomberg and so many others predicted.