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The Media covers the DC Holocaust Museum shooting Print E-mail
Written by Gene Gaudette   
Wednesday, 10 June 2009

Here's an interesting contrast between the two credible American cable news networks' coverage of the early afternoon shooting incident at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in downtown Washington:

  • CNN focused on the details of the shooting, with a heavy emphasis on eyewitness accounts;
  • MSNBC used traffic cams and newsroom reporters until they got a crew on the scene – then ran with the early scoop on the shooting suspect's identity. He's a home-grown terrorist bigot named James von Brunn – and MSNBC's focus shifted to the nature of the act, that of an anti-American extremist as the perpetrator of another audacious act of gun violence within our nation.

UPDATE: At 2:30pm EST, CNN identified the shooter and credited NBC News and WJLA.

UPDATE 2 (4pm EST): Shep Smith has broken from the FOX News Channel script. From a comment over at DKos:

I am so pleased with how he is covering this, he says this hate and sickness about Obama must stop!  He has brought it up a few times, saying that the right wing extremist haters are not only wrong but need to be watched.

Also said that the "right military extremists" paper by [Homeland Security Secretary Janet] Napolitano (and the one discussing the left) had a reason, were correct and simply a warning.

[FOX homeland security correspondent Catherine] Herridge said the same thing, so has the security advisor [guest bobblehead].

Shep is doing a TERRIFIC job... to the point of reading some nut's email who said "Stop saying that the 'obscene' paper by homeland security was right" etc. and he called her out by name on the air, told her she was wrong.

More from Herridge, via Jason Linkins:

GALLAGHER: It's a fair admonishment to us Catherine, to be careful of the facts here. But as you look at these, these types of groups that the FBI may or may not be investigating in the hours and days to come, we often forget about homegrown groups, and as you were saying in a report just a few days ago, one of the big concerns now about terrorism is from within.

HERRIDGE: Well that's right; for some context I think we need to look a the incidents today and see the warning from Homeland Security, about left-wing and right-wing extremist groups in this country, in a somewhat different light. I know from having interviewed every homeland security secretary who's come through that office that their primary concern has always been the lone wolf attacks. As I mentioned earlier today, the lone wolf attack is the most difficult to thwart because it is a conspiracy of one, an individual who is not sharing information with other people. The broader the conspiracy, as you can imagine, the more likely it is that information will leak and law enforcement will be able to intervene. So again it's a lone wolf attack, during the inaugural period, right up to today, I know that is the number one concern. And whether this is in fact the case, this would appear, and I would emphasize appear to fit that profile. And again I think we have to consider that these warning from Homeland Security that became so controversial earlier this year about left-wing and right-wing extremist groups, we have to now see them in a different light because they did specifically talk about the spread of white supremacy groups--[CROSSTALK]

UPDATE 3 (4:30pm EST): How long will it be until the mainstream media uses the "T" word? From Guardian.co.uk:



The shooting, which was being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism, comes just days after Barack Obama visited the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany alongside Angela Merkel and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

An earlier version of the article read "Law enforcement officials did not release any names or a motive for the shooting but an official with the FBI said the agency is investigating the incident as an act of domestic terrorism."

 
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