Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Bill D'Agostino made an interesting declaration in a Nov. 30 post: "If Darrell Brooks were a white man who drove a car into a crowd of black people, the media would still be talking about Waukesha."
If that's true, then the opposite is true as well: The MRC and other right-wing media gave disproportionate attention to the incident in Waukesha, Wis., in which Brooks allegedly ran down people on a parade route, killing six, is precisely because Brooks is black. D'Agostino seemed to confirm that in hissubsequent rant:
The name Darrell Brooks hasn’t been uttered a single time on CNN since last Thursday, November 25. Today marked the first time anyone on MSNBC mentioned Brooks by name since last Wednesday, November 24. The scant coverage came in the form of a hasty (34 seconds) news brief that ran once each on the network’s two morning programs, Way Too Early with Jonathan Lemire and Morning Joe.
How about the fact that Brooks is a felon who has reportedly expressed hatred for white and Jewish people? Or the fact that witnesses report he appeared to be swerving his vehicle so that he would hit as many pedestrians as possible? Nope, those facts apparently aren’t important enough to make it onto CNN or MSNBC. Nobody on either network has breathed a word about any of that.
Why?
You know why – everybody knows why. It’s because the media are peddling a nasty portrait of America in which countless violent white supremacists and racist police officers run rampant, carrying out calculated attacks on people of color with alarming frequency.
This simplistic narrative has no room for any person of color who hates white people. Those people, even if they did exist, somehow couldn't be racist.
D'Agostino has clearly bought into theright-wing narrative that people like himself should be scared of black people and that it's not racist to push that idea.
A search of the NewsBusters archive showed that it published 16 articles that reference Waukesha, a good number of which were dedicated to perpetuating that notion that the "liberal media" wasn't pushing right-wing evil-back-guy narratives about the tragedy:
- From Thanksgiving to Waukesha: The Liberal Media Censor History
- Nets Can’t Be Bothered With Waukesha Attack as Fox Gets Interview With Brooks
- STUDY: Nets Abandon Parade Slaughter, Censor Bigoted Hate of Wisconsin Killer
- Tucker Carlson, Sean Duffy TORCH the Liberal Media for Neglecting Waukesha
By contrast, the MRC treated a school shooting in Michigan much differently -- we could find only seven articles referencing the shooting at Oxford High School in which three students were killed. By D'Agostino's logic on Waukesha, we can only assume that's because the alleged student shooter is white and that the shooter's parents had voiced support for Donald Trump. In contrsst to the MRC's evil-black-guy tone on Waukesha, it scoverage of the Michigan shooting was defensive:
- MSNBC NatSec Analyst: Conservatives May Make Fugitive Parents Heroes
- CNN Hypes Dem's Vile Attacks Blaming GOP for School Shooting
- CNN: 'Even After These Tragedies,' Republicans 'Cling' To Their Guns
That eagerness to downplay the Michigan shooting could be found across right-wing media: Fox News gave nearly twice as much coverage to its own Christmas tree catching fire than to the shooting.
When the MRC complains about something, it usually means that it's doing the same thing, albeit ideologically opposite.
