The rhetoric of fear feeds terror

[Joanne98]

It should have been a national story with heavy coverage. The hook, on its face, seems tailor-made for breathless coverage: last week in Spokane, Washington state, a suspected rightwing terrorist attempts to murder multiple parade-goers who are out to celebrate the life of an American hero killed by a rightwing terrorist 43 years ago. The talking heads would have an endless series of important-sounding questions to ask – with "political vitriol" and "hate", no doubt, figuring highly. Experts in counterterrorism, hate groups and racial politics could be brought on as guests, alongside shocked near-victims of this thwarted bombing, which FBI officials have described as sophisticated and potentially able to kill numerous people.

Other attempts, which had far less chance of going off, receive heavy coverage, so why did the national news media give the attempted bombing at the Spokane MLK Day parade such cursory amount of coverage?

The answer lies in looking at which two national news organisations did give the story the coverage it deserves, MSNBC and the Huffington Post. Yep, that's right: the two liberal outlets. Everyone else was afraid or unwilling to give the story any oxygen – even though doing so could help catch the perpetrators by publicising the reward the FBI is offering.

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer has the right instincts, which is to look at the aftermath of the shooting in Tucson, Arizona to see how it might have influenced public discourse around domestic terrorism. Liberals can – and should – be forgiven for blaming the right for the news that a Democratic congresswoman who has been heavily targeted by paranoid Tea Party activists in a state that's giving South Carolina some competition in the contest for most reactionary state in the country

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/24/washington-state-martin-luther-king

[my2sense]

1. Glad someone else is paying attention n/t