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Just the facts ma’am
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It has been quite a two week period for the nut cases in this country; and the always present “labelers” who seem to drift in to “explain” the situation. You know the type. They tie a neat little bow around the alleged crime, give forth their opinion as to right and wrong and what motivates such a person.
I am talking about three similar, yet very different shootings that have occurred in recent days in 
The first was the cool blooded murder of a well known abortion doctor in
Roeder approached Dr. Tiller during his ushering duties at the Lutheran church he attended. With a single shot, Roeder killed him in plain view of many in the congregation. He did not panic, but rather calmly drove away and was arrested two hours later.
Private William Andrew Long, a military recruiter in
Muhammad, like Roeder, did not panic and merely laid down his weapon and was arrested for first degree murder. Carlos Blesdoe, his former name, claimed his shooting “as an “act”, for the sake of God, for the sake of Allah, the Lord of the world, and also retaliation on
U.S. Holocaust security guard Stephen T. Johns was shot to death by a known white supremacist and avowed anti-Semite in
There is nothing new about these types of people in our society. They are all around us. Their flag of reason is hate by default and their intentions are purity and reason.
In all three cases, the alleged gunmen were in one way or another known to police and their “politics” well documented.
But something else jumped from the news coverage of these tragedies as I read of these fallen men. The media, in keeping with their own personal take on these incidents, painted their version of events. Each assailant was given his own personal label.
Scott Roeder was described as “a creature of the right” by many media outlets with a left wing bent. Instead of the correct description that applies to any murder, he was mentally dysfunctional, delusional and paranoid. Murder is based on hate first, and the assailants view of the world and those in it second. But, it was much tidier to wrap up the case and put “right-wing racist” on as a bow.
Strangely, of the three aforementioned shootings, the Private Long murder gained the least notoriety. It came very suddenly across the wire and except for a few comments by left leaning pundits claiming the Fox News Network for complicity, it settled into obscurity quickly.
The U.S. Holocaust murder was given more press coverage, but it was cast aside as just another nut cake right wing bigot out for a pound of Jewish flesh. Strangely, the victim was a black man.
The press is so quick to label. .jpg)
Thousands of hardcore believers in any number of causes from anti-American hatred to abortion to whatever have as strong of views as these alleged killers have. But they didn’t go off half-cocked and kill for it. Indeed, many of them are maybe one small step away from committing the same types of vile acts, but what stops them from murder?
Stories of this sort promote journalists to present their own point-of-view which makes for great copy, debate and ratings/readership. If Bob Smith kills John Jones over the use of a lawn mower, it will receive back page relevance if at all. It’s too hard to process a good debate over a mower.
But throw in right-wing zealots, crazed Muslims or white supremacists and you’ve got a page turner for that day’s edition or show.
Of the three stories, what I found coming through in the three murders was instant opinion, amateur psychological profiling, justification and rampant disregard for facts not even known yet to the investigators.
The media agenda on these three events was so slanted, that anyone attempting to claim Scott Roeder as anything but a right wing fanatic exploding over an abortion doctor was not hearing the “facts” presented. He had to be the anchor of all people in this country opposed to abortion.
The Private Long murder became a slam dunk case that Fox News was pollinating the notion that all Muslims in this country are fanatic murderers and that was the reason for Muhammad going berserk. Lock them all up now before it’s too late.
And von Brunn killed as an anti-Semite, yet no Jews were killed in the fracas.
We’ll probably never know why these people killed their victims. It could be for any variety of reasons. A Jew could have stolen von Brunn’s lunch money years before. Muhammad could have been teased in school by white bullies and Roeder angry with Dr. Tiller taking up time from his agenda.
Who will ever know?
But more and more, journalists are writing straight black and white articles as their own book rather than a hard news story. Opinion has its place in designated areas like smoking. A place where you know there is smoking and you may choose to avoid it. You respect that reality.
But when a story is thrust in front of the reader as fact and NOT the opinion it is, journalism has left the building and the principles it is built on are for naught. Respect for the reader is gone. The “sign” that says “news” isn’t what it pretends to be.
We all have opinions. Some choose to project them louder than others which are their right. But I draw the line and become insulted when one human being makes a personal decision to interject their thoughts into the evening “news.”
Years ago, the evening news often carried opinion at the end of their broadcasts. Eric Severeid, the distinguished CBS journalist provided that on “The Evening News with Walter Cronkite” for many years. We KNEW it was news, but it was news with an opinion and forthrightly told that to the viewer.
I fear that we as Americans have begun to blur the division between our own line of thinking and what we agree with and the actual facts of any given incident. There is an old proverb that says, “Don’t believe everything you read”, but I fear the line has been crossed and is being crossed ever more frequently.
Whether it’s right or left!
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