Jared Loughner

Bozell, Hannity Discuss How Media Are Ignoring Left-wing Inspiration of Cop Killer Dorner
By NB Staff | February 8, 2013 | 11:00 AM EST

While ultimately only cop-killer Christopher Dorner is responsible for his crimes, the liberal media's deliberate papering over of the left-wing views that inspired him is telling, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell noted on the February 7 edition of Fox News Channel's Hannity program.

When you read Dorner's manifesto, it's clear that "[y]ou've got a direct association of liberal luminaries with this killer. This in no way is to suggest that" any of them should be held responsible for Dorner's murders, Bozell cautioned, but, that being said, "how in the world do you put that alongside the pattern of these reporters on the Left who have connected the dots to conservatives in previous killings when there was no connection to conservatives?" [watch segment video below page break]

NYT Ignores Leftist Website Connection to FRC Shooter, Yet Suggested Palin Map Inspired Jared Loughner to Kill
By Clay Waters | February 7, 2013 | 9:47 PM EST

Floyd Corkins Jr. pleaded guilty on Wednesday to wounding a security guard at the Washington headquarters of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian lobbying group fighting against gay marriage, on August 15 last year. Corkins was carrying 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches at the time – the restaurant chain noteworthy for its public, Christian-based opposition to gay marriage – and intended to rub the sandwiches in his victims' faces.

The New York Times made do with a brief from Reuters that did not mention a vital angle: That FRC was brought to the attention of Corkins via the website of the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center, which has labeled FRC a "hate group."

CBS Falsely Labels Handgun Used in Tucson Massacre an 'Assault Weapon'
By Matthew Balan | January 30, 2013 | 3:46 PM EST

On Wednesday's CBS This Morning, Nancy Cordes falsely characterized the weapon used in the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona. Cordes noted that former astronaut Mark Kelly, "whose wife...Gabrielle Giffords was badly injured in the Tucson shooting," would call for a ban on "assault weapons like the one that was used to wound his wife and kill six others."

However, Jared Loughner, the perpetrator of the massacre, used a Glock 19 handgun with a 33-round magazine, not the military-style, semi-automatic rifles that are often labeled "assault weapons" by gun control supporters. The journalist even showed a photo of the firearm in question as she misrepresented its type. [audio available here; video below the jump]

Gabby Giffords Shooter Jared Loughner Gets Seven Life Sentences
By Noel Sheppard | November 8, 2012 | 5:59 PM EST

Jared Lee Loughner, the man that shot former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz) in a Tucson shooting rampage in January 2011, was given seven life sentences without the ability of parole Thursday.

Victims and their relatives including Giffords' husband Mark Kelly addressed Loughner in the courtroom before the sentence was read.

NYT's Roger Cohen Smears Palin, Other GOP 'Ideological Fellow Travelers' of Norway Mass Murderer
By Clay Waters | July 25, 2011 | 3:17 PM EDT

New York Times international columnist Roger Cohen smeared Sarah Palin and Republicans in general in a politically opportunistic hit piece, ostensibly about the massacre in Norway, posted to nytimes.com on Monday, “Breivik and His Enablers.”

On one level Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian responsible for the biggest massacre by a single gunman in modern times, is just a particularly murderous psychotic loner: the 32-year-old mama’s boy with no contact with his father, obsessed by video games (Dragon Age II) as he preens himself (“There was a relatively hot girl on [sic] the restaurant today checking me out”) and dedicates his time in asexual isolation to the cultivation of hatred and the assembly of a bomb from crushed aspirin and fertilizer.

No doubt, that is how Islamophobic right-wingers in Europe and the United States who share his views but not his methods will seek to portray Breivik.

We’ve seen the movie. When Jared Loughner shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords this year in Tuscon [sic], Arizona -- after Sarah Palin placed rifle sights over Giffords’ constituency and Giffords herself predicted that “there are consequences to that” -- the right went into overdrive to portray Loughner as a schizophrenic loner whose crazed universe owed nothing to those fanning hatred under the slogan of “Take America Back.” (That non-specific taking-back would of course be from Muslims and the likes of the liberal and Jewish Giffords.)

CNN's Sanjay Gupta Asks 'Did Someone or Something Fail Jared Loughner?' After Patrick Kennedy Sympathizes With Tucson Shooter
By Matt Hadro | May 23, 2011 | 6:28 PM EDT

"Did someone or something fail Jared Loughner?" CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked recovering alcoholic and former congressman Patrick Kennedy Sunday. The question came after Kennedy described his alcoholic condition as a mental disease and not a moral failure, and attributed mental illness to Loughner, the Tuscon shooter who killed six and critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in January.

When Kennedy was asked about Loughner being "failed," he issued a sweeping indictment of society. "Clearly we all failed," he said, noting that the Giffords assassin was mentally ill and was not treated for his ailments. "We failed as society because every time we see someone who's – and we use the pejorative words 'crazy,' you know, 'psycho,' 'nuts,' we look the other way."

(Video below the break.)

Chris Jansing Tries to Link Giffords Shooter With Fringe Right-Wing
By Matt Hadro | February 23, 2011 | 2:56 PM EST

MSNBC's Chris Jansing, referencing a report by the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on "active U.S. hate groups," asked Wednesday if the rise of radical right-wing groups coincided with the motives behind Jared Loughner's assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

When asked about the "hate groups" report, guest Mark Potok of the SPLC immediately pointed to the rise of "radical right-wing groups" and attributed the rise to "resentment over the changing racial demographics," "frustration over the lagging economy," and "mainstreaming of conspiracy theories."

"The economy since the fall of 2008, of course, has really played into this in terms of unemployment, anger with the bailouts, and so on," added Potok. "It's really ginned-up anti-government feeling, in many ways."
 

 

Special 'Mega Edition' of 'Media Mash' Tackles Bill Maher, ObamaCare, Ron Reagan Claiming Father Had Alzheimer's in Office
By NB Staff | January 21, 2011 | 11:10 AM EST

The attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords could have been averted if America had government-run health care, according to left-wing comedian Bill Maher.

That's just the first instance of liberal media advocacy that NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center president Brent Bozell touched in the January 20 "Media Mash" segment on FNC's "Hannity" program.

"This is the desperation that they're in to sell ObamaCare, that they know the American people don't want," Bozell argued.

Video embedded after page break or click here for MP3 audio.

New York Times Profile Still Trying to Link Loughner to Right-Wing Extremism
By Rusty Weiss | January 16, 2011 | 11:21 AM EST

The New York Times simply can’t help themselves.  They simply cannot leave their opinions out of supposedly objective pieces of journalism.  Which begs the question, if the bulk of the articles contain this type of reporting, why does the Times even bother having a separate opinion section?

In a profile piece on Tucson gunman Jared Loughner titled, Looking Behind the Mug-Shot Grin of an Accused Killer, the Times takes two separate occasions to toss in a casual link to ‘right-wing groups’ (h/t Byron York).

The first cheap shot shows up on the first page of a seven page profile:

He became an echo chamber for stray ideas, amplifying, for example, certain grandiose tenets of a number of extremist right-wing groups — including the need for a new money system and the government’s mind-manipulation of the masses through language.

The second instance addresses the currency issue and casts blame on the right as well :

Frank Rich Still Trying To Blame Right For AZ Shootings
By Mark Finkelstein | January 16, 2011 | 9:33 AM EST

Like Rahm Emanuel, who wouldn't waste a crisis, Frank Rich doesn't want to let a murderous rampage pass without trying to wring political advantage.  By now, even most ardent liberals have had to admit that there was no nexus between conservatives and the manifestly psychotic AZ shooter.  But there was Rich, in his New York Times column of this morning, still bitterly clinging to the accusation.

To be sure, Rich recited some disclaimers that by now have become standard.  But by unlucky paragraph 13, Rich could restrain himself no more.  Fulminated Frank: "Much of last week’s televised bloviation was dishonest, dedicated to the pious, feel-good sentiment that both sides are equally culpable for the rage of the past two years." That is a "false equivalency," he sputtered.

Two paras later, out popped what amounted to a flat-out accusation.  After claiming there exists "antigovernment radicalism as rabid on the right now as it was on the left in the late 1960s," Rich argued:

"That Loughner was likely insane, with no coherent ideological agenda, does not mean that a climate of antigovernment hysteria has no effect on him or other crazed loners out there."

Translation: yeah, Loughner was crazy, but conservatives are still to blame.

 

Video: MRC's Bozell Addresses Left's History of Politicizing Tragedies
By NB Staff | January 12, 2011 | 1:13 PM EST

Jared Loughner was in no way a conservative or inspired by alleged conservative talk show "hate," yet the media have been quick to blame conservative talk radio and Sarah Palin for his assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona), all in an effort to delegitimize and demonize the conservative movement.

This stands in stark contrast to how the media have been silent on the real political motivations of crazed left-wingers, NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell noted on the January 11 "700 Club."

Newsweek Stubbornly Pretends Loughner a 'Lone Wolf' Right-winger
By Ken Shepherd | January 11, 2011 | 5:12 PM EST

Jared Loughner, the suspect arrested in Saturday's shooting death of a federal judge and critical wounding of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona), is no right-winger and certainly not a military veteran.

All the same, Newsweek published an article today suggesting that Loughner's deadly rampage on Saturday was the consequence of conservative politicians dismissing the warnings of a Homeland Security report from 2009 warning about "lone wolf" attacks by right-wingers, particularly those who are armed forces veterans.

In "The Missed Warning Signs," Aaron Mehta, a reporter for the Center for Public Integrity, sought to lay the blame for the shooting at the feet of Rep. John Boehner and other conservatives.