In a media world that loves sharp lines, discussions of the Trump shooting follow a predictable path
There are not many facts. However, there is an avalanche of conclusions.
That’s how it is going in many corners of the news media and among frequent commentators in the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
Authorities have not determined why a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man tried to assassinate the former president — and, now that the shooter is dead, may never know. That hasn’t stopped media figures and politicians from speculating wildly. President Joe Biden, Democrats and left-wing media outlets have all been blamed, without evidence. And then there’s the ever-popular, amorphous, definition-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder target — “them.”
“They tried to lock him up, and now they tried to kill him,” said Fox News contributor Jacob Chaffetz.
All in all, it’s a reflection of what breaking news reporting in the modern media world is designed to do: draw sharp lines, emphasize epic stories, and leave little room for the middle ground or sometimes even the truth.
Some of the claims were specific. “The Republican district attorney in Butler County, Pa., should immediately bring charges against Joseph R. Biden for solicitation of murder,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia wrote on social media“The Democrats and the media are to blame for every drop of blood,” he said Representative Marjorie Taylor Green.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” said Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. Postedtwo days before he was selected as Trump’s running mate. “That rhetoric led directly to the attempted assassination of President Trump.”
Talk show host Erick Erickson blamed MSNBC. “These people wanted Donald Trump killed,” he said on his radio show. “You can’t tell me they didn’t do it.” Charlie Kirkfounder of Turning Point USA, said “the Democrats have been inviting this for a while.”
Many news organizations have provided clues about the attempted murder of Thomas Matthew Crooks — party registration, political donations, signs outside his home — but have refrained from drawing conclusions.
For many politicians and maverick media figures, there’s little reason to hold back, says Nicole Hemmer, a political historian at Vanderbilt University and author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.”
“Because there is so much competition in the world of right-wing radio and podcasts, the pressure to be the loudest, most exaggerated, most angry voice is even greater than in any previous era,” Hemmer said.
They serve a specific audience and “they don’t believe there will be forgiveness among that audience if they don’t serve them optimally,” said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers, a trade magazine for political talk shows.
Blaming the Democrats, Hemmer said, also weakens that party’s line of attack on Trump in the current presidential campaign. He accuses the Republican of fomenting political violence in the past, such as before the Capitol riot on January 6.
After the assassination attempt, Biden has called for greater unity and a cooling of political rhetoric. But the president was vulnerable after his debate with Trump, when he told donors it was “time to put Trump in the crosshairs” for making untrue statements onstage. The choice of phrase sounds damning in retrospect, and Biden told NBC’s Lester Holt on Monday that say it was a mistake.
Speculative rhetoric in the wake of a tragedy is neither new nor one-sided. Right-wing media and politicians were quickly lambasted after the Shooting 2011 by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. The New York Times apologized and was later sued for defamation because he had falsely linked a map published by former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to the Giffords family shooting, which put Democratic-controlled districts in voters’ sights.
The anger toward mainstream and liberal media figures is palpable in the wake of Trump’s shooting. One supporter at the Pennsylvania rally held up his middle finger to television cameras that watched Trump being led away by Secret Service agents.
Feeding that anger is easy — and for some news organizations, lucrative. There are few limits to indulging such speculation, Hemmer said.
“The only effective protection is high-damage lawsuits,” she said, as Fox News previously experienced. arrange with Dominion Voting Systems about claims made after the 2020 presidential election, or jury verdicts against Alex Jones for his false claims about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
But in those cases, the allegations were very specific, not a blanket statement like “you caused this,” Hemmer said.
“They don’t have to be specific,” she said. “All you need is the ‘they’ and that does all the work.”
Politicians are more likely to engage in debt and speculation than they have in the past because those who have done it successfully, like Greene, have used it to raise money, Hemmer said. Party leaders have less power to stop them because the threat of withholding campaign donations is becoming less powerful, she said.
“The media and politicians absolutely support each other,” Hemmer said. “Moreover, the lines between the two roles have become so blurred that it’s no surprise that office holders and media personalities say the same things.”
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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him on http://twitter.com/dbauder