The First Rule of News Coverage

 

By Andrew Klavan
PJMedia.com

Here is the first rule of “mainstream” news coverage in America: Whenever the prejudices and illusions of left-wingers are confirmed by an individual incident, the incident is treated as representative; when those prejudices and illusions are contradicted, the incident is considered an aberration — and treating it as representative is deemed hateful.

It was by satirizing that rule that Breitbart’s mustache-twirling evil-doer Ben Shapiro once again got himself in hot water this week. The flagrantly brainy provocateur ran a headline describing the heart-shredding murder in Virginia of a local TV reporter and her cameraman: “Black, Gay Reporter Murders Straight, White Journalists — Media Blame the Gun.” The headline violated mainstream media protocol by being completely true while running counter to the leftist narrative. The two straight white people had in fact been killed by a mentally ill black gay Obama supporter who saw micro-aggressions everywhere and played the race card whenever he could.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Not all black gay Obama supporters are homicidal maniacs. Many of them are perfectly nice people who just want to go about their business the same as you and me. It’s totally unfair to judge all of them by the actions of one sick individual. That’s probably why ABC News is withholding portions of the killer’s lengthy manifesto. It is the responsibility of every mainstream news organization to release only that information that is good for people to know and keeps them in line with leftist thinking. Otherwise, each American might run around loose making up his own mind. And we wouldn’t want that.

Shapiro’s point, of course, was simply this:

Had a white straight man killed a black gay man, released first-person tape of the shooting, and then unleashed a manifesto about being victimized by affirmative action and anti-religious bigotry from homosexuals, the media would never stop covering the story. They’d be eager to report that shooter’s motives with all the attendant politically correct hullaballoo about the racism and homophobia of the United States more broadly. We would hear about white supremacy (reprehensible Black Lives Matter leader Deray McKesson actually jumped the gun, thinking the shooter was white, and tweeted, “Whiteness will explain away nearly anything”).

We would hear excoriations of the Republican presidential candidates for their failures to stand with the Black Lives Matter movement–and their opposition to same-sex marriage. In similar circumstances, the entire political and media establishment determined that the Confederate flag was somehow to blame for Dylan Storm Roof’s brutal slaying of nine people at a historically black church; just last week, the media tried to blame Donald Trump’s anti-immigration stance for two thugs beating up a Hispanic homeless man in Boston.

When a police officer is forced to kill a street thug, he’s a white officer killing a black teen. When yet another Islamist murders an infidel or a fellow Muslim, he’s just some random guy. When a racist lunatic kills black people, the Confederate flag must come down. I’m still waiting for calls to ban the rainbow flag after the Virginia incident, or for a mainstream discussion on whether the whole idea of micro-aggressions is the chimeric imagining of spoiled, childish, over-indulged brats who wouldn’t know oppression if it beheaded them or…  no, wait, that’s actually the only option.

I’m not a Donald Trump supporter because I don’t think he represents my beliefs, but the success of his loud-mouthery should send a message to the mainstream news media. The message is this: You lie to us every day and we hate you for it. I’d like to add, Your dishonest narrative isn’t fooling anybody, but I’m sure it is. But not all the people, and not all of the time.

When Will ABC News Release the Full Vester Flanagan Manifesto?