Political Discussions
Another Murder Related to the Abortion Debate
Posted by anticsrocks • 9/12/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: abortion, media coverage, murder, news, pro-life
This tragedy happened yesterday in Michigan. An abortion protester who was guilty of only exercising his right to free speech was shot down in cold blood by a lunatic who then went on to kill his next victim.
Where is the outrage in the media on this one? I already know what the liberals will say - "This was a random act" or "This is different, this guy was protesting."
It is painfully obvious how the far left media picks and chooses what they want to cover and instead of reporting the news, they drive the news. If they want it to be a story, then by God it will be a story!
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090912/ap_on_re_us/us_activist_killed_mich
User Comments
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There is no lack of media coverage. I typed "murder abortion Michigan" into Google and got these results:
All 1,295 news articles »
news.google.ca/news/more?pz=1&ned=ca&cf=all&ncl=d1997GrMCQn1dOMX8Dkid827bCJ...
As far as lack of outrage in the media goes, since when was the role of ethical journalists expressing outrage, as opposed to reporting the who, what, where, why and how? ?
The way news is collected and transmitted is undergoing fundamental change in an era of social media where the values of immediacy and speed dominate and IMO that's not necessarily leading to a good place. On big breaking news stories the first people on the scene will now almost certainly not be professional journalists, but amateurs who can use their mobile devices to post text, video, and pictures to the web.
But what do mainstream media outlets do with that material? The “discipline of verification” demands that some effort is made to determine the authenticity of the material, to investigate its provenance, to try to establish its context. But that can be hard to do when the text or picture may come from an anonymous source and may already be in wide circulation around the web. -
Just to point something out - the guy targeted a protester, a real estate agent and a business owner.
It was a killing spree no doubt! It is a terrible thing to have happened, but I doubt it was connected other than the guy had serious grudge issues with each individual. I don't think it was random, but I also doubt it was a pro-choice/anti-pro-life statement either.
What terrible thing to have happened...I'm keeping the victims and intended victim in positive thoughts. -
@time and Anok...So you both are saying that this is receiving the exact same treatment that the Dr. Tiller slaying did?
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I see a difference between a person killing someone - not when under duress but a cold, calculated murder - because that person was legally doing something they oppose and someone who starts a killing spree and injures himself under some kind of mental duress.
To top it off, a pro-life supporter killing someone to support ...the right...to life....is just out there for me.
What this guy did was also heinous - but it would seem that it was not instigated by politics, rhetoric, or punditry encouraging him to take violent actions against these people who apparently offended him in some way - and it was a matter of him literally - as Agit points out - "snapped" and went berserk on people.
Like the guy who burned his mother alive and went out and killed a few more people for good measure - just out in out insanity. Heinous, sad, but not cold calculated murder for political or religious ideologies. -
yes. tiller's death was political (or religious... is there even a difference anymore). This story in the OP involves a guy who knew the victim personally, either first hand or through his mother (the yahoo article isn't clear). It is a murder, but I have not heard anything to make me certain that it was an ASSASSINATION. -
I think he knew the other two men, but the pro-life protester was unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time and set this guy off with his sign. Like I said below, it could have been anyone who set this guy off.
There is also no indication that he tried to kill any other pro-life protesters, just the one who apparently made him angry. I mean, if it was political, and he was already killing people, why only one?
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It's terrible when anyone is murdered, but it isn't altogether clear that this was politically motivated. The assailant sounds mentally ill.
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Well, mentally ill - yes. I mean to kill someone in cold blood, you have to be crazy.
He evidently did not like the idea of the pro-life protester using pictures of babies and fetuses.
My point is that if you reversed the roles on this and it was a pro-abortion protester then the media would be all over it.
Like the guy who made the Obama Joker signs. He is of Palestinian descent, so the media lost interest immediately. Had he been a white, anglo-saxon protestant tea party reveler then that would have made the news for days and days. The hypocrisy in what passes for journalism these days is appalling. -
I'm not really in favor of hypothetical examples
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Agit
Please explain to me the targets of someone that kills three people on the street and ISN'T mentally ill.
I'd love to hear who you think can be killed by a sane and coherent mind. -
I mean as in the clinical sence. The yahoo news article from the OP mentioned how he had injured himself as well. This guy snapped.
Contrast this to the remorselessness of Tiller's executioner.
I don't see the correlation between the two. -
What hypothetical example? Do you still hear anything about the Obama Joker sign maker anymore? No you don't. Gee, I wonder why?
"... This guy snapped.
Contrast this to the remorselessness of Tiller's executioner.
I don't see the correlation between the two."
If this were anyone else saying this I would just mark it off to far left loonie-dom. But really Agit8r, you think that this man's death is less of a news story just because of what? The fact that the shooter was, in your words, "crazy," or the fact that it was a pro-lifer who got killed?
My opinion is that it isn't being covered in the MSM the way Tiller's death was because the man who lost his life was a pro-lifer. It is wrong that the media has such a far left slant in our country these days. -
If a pro-lifer was killed by a car in a mad-man's attempt to kill people would also be treated the same. As would pro-choice person who had been murdered in a random act of violence.
Tiller was targeted specifically due to the pro-life movement and punditry and rhetoric that inspired someone to murder a person.
These murders have no basis in political or religious ideology, and it would seem that after murdering or on the way to murdering several people, this poor soul simply was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong sign.
In other words, the sign offended this guy, yes - what other types of signs could have set him off instead of this one? Would he have killed a pro-life supporter because they're pro-life? Would he have sought one out to k ill, or did this guy have the misfortune of pissing off a psycho?
What if there had been no pro-life protest, and the person he killed accidentally bumped into him and set him off instead?
That's what we're trying to say here, he didn't target this guy because he's pro-life. He shot him because the guy managed to offend him while in the midst of a killing spree. It could h ave been anyone. -
ASSASSINATIONS are news. Random violence happens all the time
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Anok, if you continue to defend the mediocrity in our media, then you become part of the problem, and not part of the solution.
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What mediocrity? This story was all over the place in the news. The fact that there was no political emphasis placed on the fact that one of the victims was a pro-lifer is actually reporting more accurately for once. (Although there were plenty of online news and blogs that played up the pro-life aspect).
This was not a political move or assassination, and has rightfully not been treated as such. -
Why do right-wingers always want to control the media?
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That remark is laughable Agit8r. The "right-wingers" may want to control the media, I don't know. But I do know that we Conservatives are really tired of the constant leftist slant that is present in the vast majority of the media.
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Because they all called Bush out on his lies that led to the Iraq invasion. . . . Oh wait, that was just what they should have done, regardless of ideology, but they didn't.
Or maybe it's because they repeat all the phrases from the far right, as if they deserved parity in our public discourse. . . But no, that would be a good thing in right-wing eyes.
Hmmm. . . .
Oh well. -
So why are they not calling Obama out on his lies and numerous broken promises?
Why is it that the NBC website has all this Obama merchandise for sale? I checked with ABC and CBS and they only have books with the word Obama in the title, books that are both for and against Obama.
nbcuniversalstore.resultspage.com/search?w=obama&v=nbcu&x=0&y=0
Maybe its because they are so far in the tank for Obama that it isn't even funny. Because maybe they are owned by GE, who stands to make literally BILLIONS of dollars if El Presidente's programs become law?
Gee, I wonder where the 60 Minutes or 20/20 stories on the Obama / Immelt / NBC connections are? What? They aren't going to investigate that? No!
Oh well.
You can pretend that the media in this country is unbiased, but I won't allow the wool to be pulled over my eyes. -
I'm pretty sure people on this board have been over this more general topic many times. Of course, each media outlet has a bias of some sort. But your characterization and evidentiary base leave a lot of room for improvement. At one time people were offering actual media studies here, not just links to stores, or anger because a certain story was not covered in a specific way.
If I recall correctly, you see FoxNews as the only unbiased, truth-telling media outlet. Or have I got that wrong? -
i thing that such a definition of "constant leftist slant" exposes said right-winginess o_0
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@mark...You have that wrong. And as usual, you ignore certain parts of my post. Do you think a news media should be selling Obama merchandise? You don't think that shows bias?
@Agit8r...you seem to be shifting your political outlook these days. -
who's shifting. I've always been in the center (center-left if you believe those political quizzes)
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@antics:
Were you referring to your attitude towards fox when you said I had it wrong? That was the question I was asking, and I don't see any comment about it in your OP.
And no, I see nothing wrong with a news website trying to raise revenue by selling memorabilia, seeing as how that has nothing to do with actual reporting. Would you also have them stop selling the Chuck stuff? -
Selling items or "swag" that is related to their programming is perfectly understandable, it helps advertise their shows. Go capitalism. But to offer Obama swag, which helps "advertise" him, at that point how can anyone expect anything but bias in Obama's favor?
"Lott reported what might seem obvious: there’s no Bush merchandise, and "NBC did not say whether it ever sold Bush items after his victory in 2000." Lott noted NBC is unique, that the CBS and ABC online stores sell books about the president, but no merchandise. Fox and CNN do not sell books or merchandise.
Fox News even demonstrated its fairness-and-balance motto by inviting Eric Alterman to dismiss the Obama hucksterism as ideologically meaningless:
"I think it indicates that NBC thinks it can make money from selling Obama items but not from McCain or Bush items," said Eric Alterman, author of the book, "What Liberal Media?" and an English and journalism professor at Brooklyn College in New York....
Alterman said the idea that the Obama merchandise reflects on the reporting at NBC and MSNBC was "almost comically stupid."
"Do these conservatives think that the person making the decision of what items to sell in the NBC gift shops is the person giving orders about how to slant the politics of NBC News?" he asked. "What about the choice of beverage sales in the cafeteria?"
This is a strange argument to make for a socialist like Alterman, a man who constantly suggests that the media can’t possibly be liberal and corporate at the same time, since corporate executives are (a) automatically, almost genetically conservative and are (b) intimately involved in the production of news. His book What Liberal Media has a whole chapter titled "You’re Only As Liberal as the Man Who Owns You.""
I think that pretty much says it all...
newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2009/08/21/nbc-online-store-offers-29-pro-... -
If it makes you feel better Antics, NPR fairly often features criticism of Obama's policies
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*dances*
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Here's the NY Times coverage of the victim on 9/13: www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/us/14abortion.html
It's really a remembrance of the victim. It doesn't address the killer.
And here's the NY Times coverage of the actual murder:
www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/us/12slay.html?fta=y
Here's Obama deploring the murder in a public statement:
www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jP2XM0CTfREPoH8eRR16wZ2VMGSgD9AM...
The events as Agit8r and Anok construe them make sense. Why the other murder too, one totally unconnected to the anti-choice movement? Was this really an assassination? Or a random murder. The point is perhaps moot for now, as the damage has been done. Maybe we'll learn more about the murder's motivations whenever the trial occurs.
When I look on Google I see no shortage of coverage, and I also see plenty of people claiming the murder is not being covered, or rather, that there is insufficient "outrage" over the murder. But I don't remember feeling outrage about the assassinated doctor. More saddened than anything. Is outrage the new politically correct emotion that we are supposed to feel in the face of tragedy? Are news agencies supposed to wear their feelings on their sleeves instead of reporting the news? Or is this only supposed to happen for certain types of crimes? Mandating feelings is a tricky business, seems to me. Replacing reporting with feelings too.
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