Has right-wing carping killed coverage of major "domestic terrorism" in Spokane?

[Derechos]

Source: Media Matters

This should be a major news story -- deserving of signifcant coverage on cable TV and on leading mainstream media news sites:

SPOKANE, Wash. — A backpack found along the route of the Martin Luther King Jr. march in Spokane contained a bomb "capable of inflicting multiple casualties," the FBI said Tuesday, describing the case as "domestic terrorism."

The FBI said the Swiss Army-brand backpack was found about 9:25 a.m. PST on Monday on a bench at the northeast corner of North Washington Street and West Main Avenue in downtown Spokane.

In an interview on msnbc cable's "The Rachel Maddow Show," Spokesman-Review reporter Thomas Clouse said confidential sources told him that the device was equipped with a remote control detonator and contained shrapnel.

The fantasically good news here is that a major tragedy was averted -- in large part because of alert Spokane citizens who spotted the backpack, thought it suspicious, and called the police, just as authorities have asked the public to do ever since 9/11. The bad news, of course, is that someone out there wanted to cause a major tragedy -- on Martin Luther King Day, no less -- and that person, or persons, is still at large.

An explosion and the potential for multiple murders that a shrapnel bomb could have caused to those celebrating Dr. King's legacy would have been a staggering blow to a nation that is still reeling and feeling the aftershocks of the first assassination attempt against a member of Congress in nearly 33 years. Even though the bomb didn't explode, the episode raises deeply troubling new questions about the extent of violent politically fueled anger in America in 2011, and why it seems that liberal targets like Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and now King Day marchers are the ones in the crosshairs, to use the controversial word of the day.


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But you wouldn't know that if, for example, you visited the two websites that -- in my own 30 years of experience as a journalist, for better or worse -- do more than any other to set the agenda on national coverage in newsrooms across the country.


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... -- but the silence of the leading mainstream news website -- that of the New York Times -- is a little harder to explain. I've checked their home page at least a half-dozen times since last night, and I have yet to see a featured story on the FBI investigating "domestic terrorism" in Washington State.

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Maybe the implications are just a little too frightening for the mainstream media to want to deal with. But this episode seems to clarify what some of us have been reporting and writing about for the last two years, that there is an escalating tide of political violence in this country, and the majority of perpetrators or incidents involve the targets of eliminationist rhetoric from the right wing. This is a major issue for America -- on a par, in my opinion, with U.S.-China relations or the future of health care reform -- and the media is dropping the ball here, big-time. It's not too late to pick it up.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201101190028

[hlthe2b]

1. Anyone ever compared the Eric Rudolph coverage

to that of any incident linked or possibly linked to Muslims? Yes, of course the MSM is cowed by RW extremists and their followers.

[OHdem10]

2. And we can count on the Media to look out for the American People

or is their duty protect a political party by
spiking news stories. This goes on all the time.

[Doctor_J]

3. I think this might be misplaced

No so much that Big Media is ignoring right-wing terrorism, as much as Big Media are part of the right wing terrorist cell.

Check out part 2 of my sig. Seriously - Besides Ed, Rachel, Keith - can you think of a single member of Big media who could be considered liberal?