Violent agenda: reports on shooting show political bias
January 22, 2026 4:33 PM
On Jan. 8, 2011, a gunman opened fire at a community meet-and-greet in Tucson, Arizona, shooting Representative Gabrielle Giffords in the head, and killing six other people.
The alleged gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, was tackled to the ground as he tried to reload his weapon, and is being held without bail, charged with crimes including attempted assassination.
And on Jan. 8, as the tragic story was unfolding on news channels and websites across the U.S. and internationally, with basic values such as relevance and integrity in reporting were thrown out the window.
What happened in Tucson is inarguably a tragedy beyond words. Six lives were taken and many more irrevocably changed in minutes at the hands of a deeply troubled man.
Loughner, 22, was asked to leave his Arizona community college in September following several bizarre and frightening incidences in class and on campus.
He had posted video rants on the Internet, railing against what he described as a government project to control the population through grammar and language, and denigrating U.S. currency.
I am admittedly no psychologist, but these and other accounts of Loughner’s strange beliefs and proclamations indicate to me that he must have had some severe mental health issues that were going unexamined and untreated (his community college, with over 60, 000 students, offered no mental health services).
I am likewise no political scientist, but arguments like Loughner’s regarding currency and grammar are at best fringe positions, and at worst full-blown conspiracy theories, in the most pejorative sense of the term.
But it seems impossible that mainstream (in this case, read: left-wing) media can comprehend an act of violence against a politician that is not, in any meaningful sense, political.
Arizona and its state politics have been in the news for months now, beginning with the adoption of stringent and arguably discriminatory laws brought forth last spring, which proposed to allow state sheriffs to demand that any suspicious-looking person present proof of citizenship at any time.
Arizona is a state that has some of the most permissive gun laws in America, supported by the democratic Giffords, and yet Giffords’ district was targeted by Sarah Palin’s team of republican policy wonks as a threat because of her support of President Obama’s health care reform bill.
Confused yet? You’re not alone.
Apparently, if a democratic politician is the victim of a violent attack in a politically-volatile state, the republicans, directly or indirectly, did it.
This was the implication of nearly all media coverage in the few days following the attack. In many reports, the words “Tucson shooting” and “Tea Party” were correlated with the same alarming regularity that “Terrorist Attack” and “Iraq” were back in 2001.
In other words, these associations were pervasive despite a lack of evidence to support them. Above the vague and sentimental statements about the increased need for bipartisan cooperation and a toning-down of rhetoric, there was obvious, repulsive, mud-slinging blame being flung from the mainstream towards vocal right-wingers.
Exhibit A: the New York Times published an article on Jan. 10 entitled, “Talk Radio Hosts Reject Blame in Shooting.”
Now, try and follow the logic here: some junior (I hope) reporter got it into his head that right-wing rhetoric may have been a contributing factor in the shooting. He does some research into the suspect in custody (read: checks facebook and YouTube), and finds that this is not the case.
He asks some radio hosts to accept blame anyway, and the radio hosts politely (I doubt it) decline. He writes a piece, submits it to an editor who approves it, and the article, containing no value, worth, or meaning, goes to print.
And the fictional republican influence-shooter-tragedy chain is strengthened, the public is neither edified nor educated, and the reporter goes on to cover the funeral of one of the victims.
The world already has enough real violence caused by enough real people, who have their own tragedies to overcome.
The political wrangling of countries, states, and individuals are serious and complicated enough, without the members of the supposedly-honorable Fourth Estate disguising their prejudices and agendas as news stories.
The Tucson shooting, tragic and inexplicable as it is, could have sparked some genuine soul-searching about treatment of and funding for mental illness.
Instead all we got was shallow, false reporting from those more interested in scoring political points on irrelevant issues than in presenting a heartbreaking story with human complexity. For shame.
With files from the New York Times.