Ezra Dulis
Big Journalism
7/27/2011
Anders Behring Breivik’s manifesto, penned before his horrific mass murder in Oslo, contains 1,500 full pages of text, yet the New York Times has not asked readers to pore over it and help them find information relevant to their coverage of his terrorist attack. The Huffington Post has not posted a blog advertising “LIVE UPDATES” from those studying the writings’ minutiae. Neither has the Guardian, MSNBC, ABC News, Yahoo! News, nor has the Washington Times created a Twitter account to tweet live micro-updates of research on this document. What documents did prompt this fanatic scrutiny? If you guessed the emails of a private citizen during her tenure as Governor of Alaska, you’d be right.
Why the discrepancy? Two words: the narrative. Our J-school geniuses, the only people academically certified to act as gatekeepers for the widespread dissemination of information, needed more information to rebuild their narrative of Palin but don’t need more information to support their narrative of Breivik. None of the ethics lawsuits about Palin stuck while she was governor, so they needed to find something– anything– that proved Palin was as corrupt as they believed her to be (belief still maintained without a shred of evidence). And now, the narrative is Breivik = Tea Party/Bloggers/Conservatives/Christians, so his targets (Labour Party children), anti-Islamic and anti-Marxist statements, plus his Facebook profile stating he was a “Conservative Christian” is all the information they need.
But the champions of the “No Labels” movement are content to leave “Conservative Christian” completely unexamined. Where’s the nuance from the MSM? David Frum calls himself a “conservative,” and so do I, yet our positions on myriad issues couldn’t be more different. Nancy Pelosi calls herself a Christian, and so do I, yet our positions on even more issues couldn’t be more different. Where is their curiosity to find out what Anders Behring Breivik meant when he called himself a “Conservative Christian?” Are their content to merely stereotype his actual political and economic views with two undefined words? I’m sorry; that was rhetorical. Of course they are. It serves their agenda to smear people who had nothing to do with this travesty, and besides, it’s just so hard to read all those words!
But Breivik’s actual words completely contradict the “Conservative Christian” caricature. Below, you can see how, to save the environment, he wants the world to rid itself of oil consumption. You can see how he wants a one-child policy, government control of private industries, the breakup of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, the military support of Russia to prevent a possible U.S. invasion of Europe, and the removal of all U.S. military bases from European soil. Yes, the tea party platform through and through…
The article continues at Big Journalism.
Also at Big Journalism:
NY Times Thinks Free Speech, Not Deranged Thoughts, Kill
And Dana Loesch educates the media, “A Quick Lesson for the Media on the Definition of ‘Right Wing'” :
I loathe when American conservatives define themselves as “right wing” anything, even in jest — just as I loathe when the liberal press uses it as identification for American conservatives — because it is an inaccurate use of the term.
The terms Right and Left were coined during the French Revolution, referring to seating arrangements in parliament; those who sat on the right supported preserving the institutions of the Ancien Régime (the monarchy, the aristocracy and the established church). Use of the term “Right” became more prominent after the second restoration of the French monarchy in 1815 with the Ultra-royalists.
[…]
In the successive legislative assemblies, monarchists who supported the Ancien Régime were commonly referred to as rightists because they sat on the right side.
Datechguy also takes a look at the manifesto and shares evaluations from other sites.
