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Media bias? Tennessee church shooting missing from ABC’s GMA

Last week the media bias story was the absence of the John Edwards Love-Child saga. I got that one wrong, saying that the press is doing the dance they always do and predicting that the story would make the next day’s morning news shows. It didn’t. (And Slate’s Mickey Kaus is among those keeping on it.)

Today I was wrong again. I was certain that the Knoxville, Tennessee, shooting of 8 people, leaving two dead, during Sunday services while a group of children were performing would lead the morning news shows. I only record ABC and NBC, but the story did not make the headline introduction to either show. It was included in the NBC news segment, but was comletely absent from ABC’s Good Morning America.

Again, I want to say that media bias is not typically my beef. I see them as creatures of the “free” market acting in the way that market mandates. But I simply cannot imagine if the exact same tragedy had played out in the opposite way, a man motivated by hatred of conservatives had interrupted a fundamentalist evangelical service while children were singing, shot 8 and killed 2, that it would not make the morning news?

The story did make the NYTimes and the WaPo.  Bloggers are, of course, all over it. Chris Bowers gets email. Towleroad quotes KnoxNews on the gunman’s role models:

“Inside the house, officers found Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder by radio talk show host Michael Savage, Let Freedom Ring by talk show host Sean Hannity, and The O’Reilly Factor, by television talk show host Bill O’Reilly.”

RJ Eskow at the Huffington Post says a bit about the Unitarian Universalist denomination before expressing his righteous indignation.

My heart goes out to the victims, most especially to those directly impacted, Elrod and all of the members of Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. But also to all those victims of hate on the Left and on the Right.

I will watch and wonder as the media coverage, or lack thereof, continues.

  • I can't fathom that the coverage is in any way affected by the ideological leanings of the church.
  • vwcat
    Liberal media is the biggest myth still going around. The media carries the water for the gop and demeans the democrats. They have been like this for 20 years.
    But, to ignore the story, one of a crazed gunman shooting people in church while children were performing onstage is just irresponsible no matter your politics.
  • runasim
    Who knows what the explanation is. I am sure, though, that with the media, anything is possible. These are powerful corporations exercising theri power to influence the news, politics, and society. Their minions are often so glaringly lakcing in basic intelleigence skills, many of them could be led by the nose without realizing what's going on. Others know exactly what's going on, and they make very good money by exploiting the possiblities.

    Considering the coverage school shootings get, I do find this very peculiar.
  • elrod
    Strangely enough, I'm glad the national media is going light with this story. We need room to mourn and grieve and the media is a real pain in the neck. The local media is enough.
  • DLS
    You're expecting too much if you insist the media be obscessed with this story.

    The media are liberal, not conservative, despite frequent lies to the contrary.

    A liberal shooting conservatives might make additional news, as it's "man bites dog."
  • superdestroyer
    If you want a wingnut/netroot/truther type answer, look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channon_Christian

    If the media makes a big deal of this shotting, the rightwing pundits will attack the media for ignoring the murder of whites by blacks. the media would be accused of highlighting a murder that makes conservatives look bad while ignoring a murder that makes liberals look bad.
  • Marlowecan
    Maybe it is the religious aspect of this. . .and not the ideological.

    I note, for example, the media avoiding like the plague the implications of the Seattle shooting of Jews by a lone madman who happened to be Muslim. Just a lone lunatic, we were told.

    This guy seems to have had a hatred for liberal churches like Elrod's. There seems to be a radical conservative religious agenda at play. If he had gunned people down at a secular institution...like a school...it would be totally different.

    Covering this story would upset lots of potential viewers and advertisers.

    Just my opinion...but referencing churches and religion makes the US media nervous at the best of times.
  • DLS
    "If the media makes a big deal of this shotting, the rightwing pundits will attack the media for ignoring the murder of whites by blacks."

    ??? I suspect instead they would just harp on the media using this as an excuse to bash all conservatives, guns, and _right_wing_pundits_ some of whose best known works were found in the shooter's home. No, not everyone who bothers to listen to those people or read their books is another Evil Gun Owner And Likely Fundamendalist Dunce, but it's tempting when something bad actually happens to proceed with full force hype and hysteria. (Less neurotic but predictable would be cheap shots of all kinds about the pundits on lefty talk radio.) They might link this shooting to the Timothy McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma City, for example. Was there no copy of The Turner Diaries or Report from Iron Mountain in the shooter's home, too?
  • kritt11
    Ok tthis is OT---maybe its also just a coincidence that a few months ago there was a local station blackout in parts of Alabama during CBS' 60 Minutes coverage of the Rove/Siegelman controversy!

    I admit it -- I have become much more paranoid about collusion between government, corporate and media entities since 2000!
  • lperdue
    Standing against violent rhetoric is a great first step.

    Today on my own blog, There Will Be Truth, I drew a connection between Animal Liberation Front bombers the Unitarian Church shooting, abortion clinic bombers, and Earth Liberation Front arsonists etc.

    They are all domestic terrorists rooted in the same phenomena that have destroyed political discourse and consensus in American politics. Those roots would be:
    <ul>
    <li>The refusal of individuals to compromise their personal concepts of right and wrong in order to further the common good.</li>
    <li>Insular, intellectually segregated groups of people who create and self-confirm extreme beliefs and their entitlement to act on them regardless of the impact on others.</li>
    </ul>
    Like many people, I have puzzled over the vicious, polemical extremes that dominate politics today. Discourse about differing opinions has been replaced by demonizing those who disagree. Both Left and Right, Democrats and Republicans resort to rants rather than persuasion.

    The lack of moderation, and the permission granted by political leaders for their followers to engage in scorched earth tactics, inevitably incites the mentally unstable to acts of violence.

    A newly published book, The Big Sort, by journalist Bill Bishop, sheds some light on why all this is happening now.

    According to the book, "In the 95th Congress (1977-1979), 40 percent of the 435 members were moderates," Bishop writes. "By the 108th Congress (2003-2005) this moderate bloc had be whittled down to 10 percent."

    Further, the book states that, "In 1976, less than a quarter of Americans lived in places where the presidential election was a landslide." The authors define "landslide" as winning by 20 percent or greater. "By 2004, nearly half of all voters lived in landslide counties."

    Nothing illustrates this schism better than the county-by-county maps of presidential voting from 1976 to 2004.

    Along with this, the book documents how, over the past three decades, Americans have chosen to segregate themselves in ways that avoid contact with people who might disagree with them politically.

    Now, the match that ignites all this gasoline: <The Big Sort presents numerous studies proving that people isolated from differing opinions become more extreme, especially with regard to political issues. In effect, people in homogeneous groups trend toward political extremes as they try to prove they have drunk the common Kool-Aid. They do not tolerate dissent or discussion. Moderates then must decide whether to comply with the group or allow themselves to be driven away.

    A study published in 2006 by Penn political scientist Diana Mutz found that only 23 percent of Americans have regular discussions with people they disagree with politically. And the more education a person has, the worse this gets.

    Moderates willing to work together for a common goal despite their differences have been replaced by tinhorn demagogues trying to stir up hatred and intolerance for anyone they disagree with.

    The self-sorting polarization of the electorate is why both political parties have abandoned any attempt at trying to sway moderates -- there are damn few left. Instead, campaigns focus on inflaming their supporters' passions, encouraging them, to intimidate the opposition and make sure they go to the polls.

    This is how both the Nazis and Communists came to power. It invigorates the ideological psychos on the fringes and gives them permission to burn, bomb and kill.

    The political "leadership" of America is responsible for extremism that leads to death and violence.

    Buy this book. Read it. Study it. It has no answers of its own, but knowledge is power and acknowledging a problem is the first step to solving it.
  • kritt11
    One thing I have noticed is that you can no longer talk to anyone with an opposing political viewpoint ( in real life) without almost coming to blows. People seem to either be almost totally apathetic or ridiculously extreme in expressing their opinions.

    Tolerance is at an all-time low- probably due to the examples set by our leadership and by cable news shows.
  • Rudi
    Fox News ignored the police news conference to carry a segment on the missing year old in Orlando. Is Natalie Holloway still missing...
  • DLS
    Shhh --

    Don't tell anybody, but Barack Hussein Osama Obama had Natalie Holloway kidnapped in the Caribbean and brought to his harem to be one of his sex slaves.
  • valrossie
    American Catholic Lay Groups and Transatlantic Social Reform in the Progressive Era (review) - The Catholic Historical Review 88:4 The Catholic Historical Review 88.4 (2002) 806-807 American Catholic Lay Groups and Transatlantic Social Reform in the Progressive Era.
    ------------------------------
    valrossie
    Tennessee Alcohol Addiction Treatment
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