Was talk radio to blame for the bloodshed in Tucson? Or was it cable news?
In the aftermath of Saturday’s assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, the finger-pointing quickly centered on The Media.
Guns?
Mental illness?
No, this tragedy was apparently caused by TV. We are so primed to talk about the nasty state of angry partisan politics, we skipped right over the more essential conversations last weekend.
Clarence Dupnik, the county sheriff in charge of the investigation in Arizona, started the media bashing almost immediately after the shooting by blaming “the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business.”
Soon, some of the most trusted media figures of our time agreed. Tom Brokaw on NBC’s “Today” decried the escalating political dialogue. “You know, in the 1960s the rhetoric on the left spilled over to the violence of the Weathermen,” he told Matt Lauer, “so we’ve gone through these cycles before.”
Bob Schieffer said on his CBS website, “Dangerous, inflammatory words are used with no thought of consequence. All’s fair if it makes the point. Worse, some make great profit just fanning the flames.”
Yes, the smack talk from politicians and commentators has reached frightening new levels, but was the shooter actually inspired by his flatscreen?
Keith Olbermann said on MSNBC that “the rhetoric has descended into the murderous” and called for a truce.
Of course, that’s unlikely. The news cycle will move on and take the nation’s short attention span with it.
It is worth noting, between the lines, the reflexive scapegoating of the media. But the media doesn’t invent inflammatory rhetoric; political partisans do.
It is also worth noting that the blanket condemnations of the media leave out one important part: The rhetoric is more incendiary on one side. While MSNBC and Fox News both do lots of spinning and name-calling, the difference is more than rhetorical.
MSNBC’s Olbermann and Rachel Maddow mercilessly zing the Republicans and generalize about “the Party of No.” But Fox News headliners Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck are more prone to violent imagery. They are on the record, as many have noted, blithely calling for shooting government officials or beheading a journalist. Sarah Palin’s crosshairs can’t be overlooked.
The tap-dancing on the right has been swift. Rush Limbaugh’s elaborate on-air explanation on behalf of conservatives, declaring himself and the Tea Party guilt-free, would seem to be a case of protesting too much.
Ultimately “The Media” — that imagined monolith that’s actually a collection of individual parts — is only a piece of the problem.
By Monday morning, CNN had moved on to a more likely headline: “guns and the mentally ill.”
That’s worth a discussion.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
