On August 26 Democrat presidential hopeful Martin O’Malley pledged to push for “mandatory background checks” in reaction to the Virginia shootings, unaware that gunman Vester Lee Flanagan passed a background check for his pistol.
Editorial standards at major newspapers simply evaporated to accommodate screeds blaming everything from Sarah Palin’s political map, to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, to everyone who didn’t vote for Barack Obama for Jared Loughner’s crime. This wasn’t just an overnight media embarrassment – it started before the bodies were even cold, and it went on for months. “Climate of hate” was the media narrative.
In an August 26 column nearly as “rambling” and incoherent as the manifesto Vester Lee Flanagan left behind, The Washington Post editorial board pointed to the gun as the central problem and cited racial tensions, Flanagan’s admitted admiration for mass
During the reporting of the murders in a black church in Charleston, the assumed racist motive of the shooter, white man Dylann Roof, was immediately the talk of the media. But now, after an African American murdered two white former co-workers and then released a 23-page, race-tinged manifesto, some in the media are suddenly squeamish about reporting the race-based motives of the killer.
On the night of August 26 The Washington Post editorial board admitted that gun control may not do anything to stop attacks like the one we saw in Virginia yet they contended that proposing gun control is still the “most productive” response to the shootings.
In the wake of the heinous attack in which Vester Lee Flanagan II allegedly shot and killed reporter Allison Park and cameraman Adam Ward, ABC’s Modern Family executive producer Steve Levitan called for people to rally against the NRA.
In a 23-page manifesto sent to ABC News, alleged Virginia gunman Vester Lee Flanagan said that the tipping point for the August 26 attack that took Allison Parker and Adam Ward’s lives was the Charleston church attack and that the initials of the the Charleston shooting victims were on the bullets he allegedly fired today.
