Brent Bozell sent me this Reuters piece at midday Thursday: “Authorities seek motive for couple's California rampage that killed 14.” That already seemed to slow to recognize the obvious. But after all of the breaking news about terrorist motives yesterday, Friday morning’s Washington Post was much sillier, with the top headline “Motive elusive in deadly Calif. rampage.”
The story even had a subhead admitting “Arsenal found in home of the two shooters.” It began with how authorities were “still trying” to locate a motive “even as they revealed the two attackers had amassed a large stockpile of explosives and ammunition.”
Another story below it on the page was headlined “Couple were quiet and withdrawn – until puzzling explosion of violence.”
The “motive elusive” story by Missy Ryan, Mark Berman, and Joel Achenbach also weirdly stated the couple “showed no outward sign of Islamist radicalization, psychological distress, or a desire for mayhem.” That’s called “preparing for a surprise terrorist attack.”
Paragraphs later, they were still playing puzzled: “Without a firmly established motive, authorities said Thursday that they could not determine whether they were dealing with terrorists, a disgruntled worker who had enlisted his wife in his cause, or some kind of hybrid of the two scenarios.”
They turned to Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League to embarrass himself by saying “it certainly is unusual and does not fit neatly into any of the traditional models of violence that we’re familiar with.”
And of course, they quoted President Obama suggesting it could be “workplace violence.”
Meanwhile, in the Post's free tabloid Express on Friday morning, an AP account began: "San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan Farook had been in contact with known Islamic extremists on social media, a U.S. intelligence official said Thursday."
This great reluctance to find Islamic terrorism is not how the Post covered the shooting at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood center, where they were quick to tag the pro-life movement (and its "tough rhetoric") for the shooting. On November 29, the front-page headline was “Alleged clinic gunman told officers: ‘No more baby parts’.” On November 30, the front-page headline was “Shooting stirs debate over abortion foes’ tough rhetoric.”
