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Mass Shootings in America: Unanswered Questions in the California Isla Vista shootings
James F. Tracy
When mass shootings take place in the United States, corporate news media can almost uniformly be counted on to act as stenographers to power. They dutifully report exactly what they’re told by authorities with wholehearted trust and close to no due diligence. This appears to have been the case yet again in the May 23 Isla Vista California mass murder.
The public has been propagandized with a familiar storyline that law enforcement authorities have peppered with lurid details–including a disturbing “manifesto” and YouTube soliloquy from a well-to-do yet alienated man who had trouble forging relationships, so he went on a wild shooting spree then committed suicide.
Like numerous other tragic events that cry out for heightened measures against gun ownership, such as the Tucson shooting, the Sikh Temple bloodletting, the Aurora movie theatre massacre, and the Newtown school shooting, initial eyewitness accounts of what took place differ markedly from what news media presented in subsequent reports—those laid out in law enforcement press conferences just hours after the event.
Otto von Bismarck famously remarked, “Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.”
In a society where the Second Amendment and gun violence have been vigorously politicized by powerful “reformists” like billionaire Michael Bloomberg, Attorney General Eric Holder, and President Barack Obama, journalists might be well-served by keeping this dictum in mind.
Source: http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/mass-shootings-america-unanswered-questions-california-isla-vista-shootings/
