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.