Democratic-Media Complex Fails Standards of Journalism in Tucson Reporting

At The New Republic, "How the Media Botched the Arizona Shooting" (via Instapundit):

When disaster strikes, journalists have to write something about it—and write it fast. That means they have to take mental shortcuts, calling up established narratives and laying them out like old wrapping paper for new and more ambiguous facts ...

But sometimes the shortcuts produce a journalistic stampede at the worst possible time. That’s what happened last weekend, when 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner shot six people to death at an Arizona Safeway and gravely wounded many more, including Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The dominant storyline in the press—one that persisted in the face of all the facts—was that right-wing hysteria and lunacy had given rise to Loughner’s atrocity. Only on Wednesday night, when President Obama delivered a speech that effectively told everyone to cut it out, was the stampede halted (one hopes). But it’s still worth reviewing how the nation’s leading periodicals descended into such mindlessness.

Let’s go back to this Saturday. When news of the incident first broke, bloggers began to speculate that this was a Tea Party-related incident. No evidence of that emerged. Once a little more information trickled out, The New York Times and other outlets linked Loughner to a far-right publication called American Renaissance. That likewise had no basis in fact. Over the next day or two, as Loughner turned out to give off numerous indications of mental illness but very few of right-wing ideology, the dominant analysis became, “Okay maybe this guy was nuts, but, still, he was at least indirectly a product of a climate of political hysteria.”

By Monday, The New York Times’ editorial page had kicked into action. It conceded that, sure, Loughner operated “well beyond usual ideological categories,” but, still, it was “legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge.” The Los Angeles Times followed suit. It admitted that, sure, Loughner and “his own demons were primarily to blame,” but it still condemned the “increasingly incendiary and violent rhetoric that characterizes today's political debate,” for which “the right bears the brunt of responsibility.” Meanwhile, dozens of opinion writers were busily adding related but equally ethereal musings to the heap. Writing in the Guardian, blogger Jessica Valenti blamed a “country that sees masculinity—especially violent masculinity—as the ideal.”

Jessica Valenti? Somehow I missed the feminist angle all this week. Tired of #MooreandMe, I guess.

More at the link, in any case. (And now I won't be able to ignore the gender feminists, who've apparently blamed the shooting on "violent masculinity." Sheesh. What next?)