Saturday, July 13, 2024. It will be a date that people will remember. They will harken back to where they were and what they were doing when they found out former President Donald Trump miraculously escaped an assassination attempt. These tragic and -- thankfully -- rare events are clarion calls to the media and especially the broadcast media. At such times, their enormous power must be channeled to rise above the partisan fray.
So, how did America's news media fare with an event that provided them with an opportunity to shine light into the darkness?
Initial television reports were deceptive at best and reprehensible at worst. Leading the charge was the wire service Associated Press. Wires like AP and Reuters used to provide the basics to news organizations, but AP forgot this somewhere along the way. Just moments after shots rang out in Butler, PA, AP ran the headline: "Donald Trump Has Been Escorted Off the Stage During a Rally After Loud Noises Ring Out in the Crowd."
CNN took its cue from AP and ran with "Secret Service Rushes Trump Off Stage After He Falls at Rally." It was downhill from there: NBC News' initial report called the shooting an "incident." The Hill reported that "loud bangs " brought the former president to his knees. Politico couldn't bring itself to call the event an assassination attempt and settled upon "shooting." Perhaps the most obtuse of them all came from Forbes: "Will Surviving Gunfire Be Donald Trump's Next Appeal to Black Voters?" One wonders who should be more offended by that headline: Trump or black voters? Forbes eventually (and mercifully) removed the headline.
Broadcast journalists took their signal from these misleading headlines and began to opine with inappropriate commentary. CNN's Jamie Gangel criticized Trump for saying "Fight, fight, fight" in the moments following the shooting. "That's not the message we want to be sending right now. We want to tamp it down," she asserted.
On Sunday, July 14, former Clinton strategist George Stephanopoulos and his sidekick Martha Raddatz couldn't stop ruminating that Trump was to blame for starting all the violent rhetoric as if to say he got what he had coming to him. It was not their finest moment.
The ultimate inside-the-beltway news organization, Axios, let its leftist flag fly high, averring, "On the eve of a Republican National Convention built on themes of victimhood and political persecution, Trump came inches — literally — from martyrdom."
But the grand prize surely must go to former President George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum, who passionately wrote, "Violence stalks the president who has rejoiced in violence to others." Then he drove in the knife with:
"Fascism feasts on violence. In the years since his own supporters attacked the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election — many of them threatening harm to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence —Trump has championed the invaders, would-be kidnappers, and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages."
Assassination Cancellations
In an almost unheard-of move on Monday, July 15, the NBCUniversal Network canceled its premier political program, Morning Joe, along with Comedy Central. The Joe Scarborough/Mika Brzezinski breakfast club and Comedy Central feature the former president's harshest critics. One can only surmise that pre-empting these indicates network honchos feared they would come under fire and ultimately be embarrassed by the hosts' comments.
Still, the cable TV outfits managed to piece together some good coverage despite their propensity to demonize Trump by often taking the former president's comments out of context, distorting them, and interpreting them literally instead of accurately.
About six hours into its live reporting, CNN managed to pull itself up by the bootstraps and – at least for a time -- return to its roots reminiscent of its early days. It ran the video of the attempted assassination and provided the who, what, when, where, and why of the frightening event. Meanwhile, on Fox, Sean Hannity and guest Newt Gingrich appeared to be speculating about the event. It wasn't until a harried Martha McCallum showed up that the network managed to find its footing by providing videos and eyewitness accounts.
The attempted assassination of a former president is nothing if not big news, and it was telling that the leftist media did not appear to have grasped the essence of a recent teachable moment when they were outed in the cover-up of President Joe Biden's still undisclosed illness. Despite having suffered the ire of their audiences, their coverage of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump indicates they have learned nothing and were unable to summon enough decency to report objectively on the events in Butler, PA.
