Bozell Column: Skipping Over the Shooting at FRC

Floyd Corkins, a volunteer for the last six months at the D.C. Center for the LGBT Community, marched into the Family Research Center with a gun and serious ammunition, denounced FRC’s policy positions, and shot a security guard in the arm before being subdued. Another hate crime, but this time against perhaps the pre-eminent pro-family organization in America. CBS gave the story 20 seconds. NBC spent 17 seconds.

Imagine a volunteer for the Family Research Council marching into some gay group’s headquarters with a gun, and after shouting his opposition to the homosexual agenda, opened fire and wounded a guard before being subdued. Never mind evening news. This would be Breaking News! and for days there would be seemingly endless coverage of continued conservative hatred.

These networks are aiding and abetting liberal violence by refusing to identify it as liberal violence. Whether it’s vandalism at Chick-fil-A or rapes in Occupy Wall Street camps, these networks simply cannot find “news” in liberal violence of any kind.

One can easily imagine how the national media elite justify their decision to spike the story. No one was killed, or in danger of dying. There are dozens of shootings a day in the DC area; this is just one more. We have more important things to cover. Both CBS and NBC spent more than two minutes promoting Team Obama’s “Dream Act” amnesty for students. NBC devoted two minutes and 45 seconds to a Chelsea Clinton story on orphaned baby elephants in Africa.

These same media outlets pounce on allegations of conservative hatred, even when there isn’t a scintilla of evidence. The Oklahoma City bombing was caused by hatred from right-wing talk radio. The Aurora killer was a member of the Tea Party. So too was the man who shot Gabby Giffords. On and on it goes, and over and over, it turns out not to be true.

ABC led “World News” with the story on the FRC shooting and saluted the heroic security guard for saving the FRC from a mass shooting in their offices. They were the exception.

Our taxpayer-funded media were silent. The “PBS NewsHour” offered nothing. It did have time to announce “About four million Bumbo baby seats are being recalled because infants can fall out of them.” NPR offered no story on “All Things Considered” on Wednesday night, but did find time to report on cheating at a national Scrabble tournament. NPR also skipped it on Thursday’s “Morning Edition,” but covered the riveting story of “inter-tribal cattle violence” in South Sudan.

MSNBC’s prime-time lineup, starting with Chris Matthews, said nothing about the shooting at FRC – except for Rachel Maddow, who offered a slightly longer brief than Brian Williams. This is the same network that went over the top and around the bend that someone at a Tea Party rally was carrying a weapon at a rally. So why can’t they produce one full story on an actual shooting at a conservative office?

On Thursday morning, the network pattern continued: ABC offered another full story (adding the LGBT volunteer connection). By contrast, NBC offered a tiny anchor-read update. CBS aired nothing, but did find the time for a story on the 40th anniversary of the movie “Deliverance.” Burt Reynolds in make-believe is somehow more newsworthy than a left-winger aiming to massacre up an office of conservative Christians.

CNN was the most offensive of all. Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage was interviewed on Thursday morning’s “Early Start,” and  protested how the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” designation for several Christian conservative groups – including FRC – is obviously now causing real harm.

In reply, with zero sense of post-shooting decency, CNN anchor Zoraida Sambolin suggested the FRC absolutely deserved the SPLC’s “hate group” label, reading from a 1999 FRC pamphlet on the National Man-Boy Love Association and gay activists. She berated Brown: “It is spewing hate, isn't it?...So it’s hate spewing hate.”

Within 24 hours of a gay-left activist shooting at the FRC, the world-class jerks at CNN are still demeaning FRC and social conservatives as “hate groups” that should be drummed out of the public conversation.