Media softpedaling right-wing terrorism

[Bgno64]

Just look at the lead to this story:

Democratic Congress members are getting lessons from the FBI on how to handle threats such as several directed at their colleagues, including bricks hurled through windows and menacing obscenity-laced phone messages left for those who supported sweeping federal health care legislation.

Now, do you have any doubt that if it were liberals making the death threats or throwing bricks through windows, it would be reported like this:

Angry liberals are engaging in a campaign of terror and destruction, targeting Republican lawmakers.

This is the media trying to soft-pedal what's happening, so they don't get tagged with the "liberal media" line. So we get: Democratic lawmakers are afraid or Democratic lawmayers say they've been targeted...

The media is failing. Again.

[NJmaverick]

1. Then it's up to us to properly frame the issue

I already routinely refer to them as terrorists in political discussions.

[Frustratedlady]

2. No surprise there, as some are inciting to action.

If something big comes of it, they have job security...gotta report the gory details, doncha know?

I swear, some of them are titillated by horror and blood.

[annabanana]

3. The media is *worse* than "failing'.

They are complicit.

[OHdem10]

4. You have to assume they share the values of people who do these

things. If they did not share the values, their outrage
would be showing.

Or, they are so fearful they are absolutely ineffectual.

[PDittie]

5. Yes. The media is failing.

Their business model particularly, and not because of any "bias" either way but because more and more people get their news from somewhere besides the newspaper or teevee.

They don't care what we think because they're too busy doing everything they can to cling to their jobs ... like everybody else.

It's time to throw a flower on their casket in the ground and become the media ourselves. When you attend an event -- a rally, a speech, a dinner, whatever -- then Tweet it, Facebook it, and/or blog it, using pics and video from your smartphone. I am seeing my local rag the Houston Chronicle -- a shell of its former self -- pick that stuff up from the blogs, etc. and link to it in their stories. Other formerly leading sources are doing it too. Perhaps you have noticed it where you live.

Whining about what/how/when the traditional, corporate, mainstream media covers the news has frankly run its course.

(Not that anybody here is whining, mind you.)

[zbdent]

6. I would have security cameras hidden around my home ...

and I would say "caller ID" ... but you have to pay for caller ID service, and it can be blocked for free ...

(It really should be that you have to pay a fee to block your phone number from showing up ...)