On Sunday’s MediaBuzz on the Fox News Channel, host Howard Kurtz opened the show on a tear, ripping into the leftist media and Democrat politicians for blaming the Buffalo shooting on Fox News and Tucker Carlson.
Kurtz started by stating the obvious that the “murder of ten innocent people in Buffalo is utterly heartbreaking in so many ways.”
Yet what Kurtz also found troubling was “the knee-jerk partisanship with which pundits and politicians on the left and sometimes the right respond to mass shootings.”
He went down the list of many mass shootings or domestic terrorist attacks that the left tried to blame on conservative media personalities.
“President Clinton blamed the Oklahoma City bombing in part on Rush Limbaugh” Kurtz recalled. “Liberal pundits and later The New York Times blamed the mass shooting in Tucson on a Sarah Palin political map that the gunman never even saw.”
Revealing the left’s rampant hypocrisy, Kurtz noted how “when a liberal Bernie Sanders supporter, and Rachel Maddow fan wounded Steve Scalise and others five years ago at a Republican congressional Republican baseball practice, the media didn't blame Maddow or left-wing philosophy.”
After airing an entire montage of rabid MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes and Joe Scarborough, who all joyfully claimed, without evidence, that the Buffalo shooter was motivated by Fox News and Tucker Carlson, Kurtz responded that Carlson’s “comments on immigration and politics, and those of anyone at this network are, of course, fair game for public debate, but blaming him for the shooting is absurd.”
He ended by correctly pointing out that “there's nothing in the suspect's hundreds of rambling pages that indicates he has ever watched one minute of Fox News.”
To read the relevant transcript click “expand”:
FNC’s MediaBuzz
5/22/2022
11:00:21 a.m. EasternHOWARD KURTZ: The murder of ten innocent people in Buffalo is utterly heartbreaking in so many ways, all victims of a suspect whose writing reaks of racism, anti-semitism and had a twisted mind. But what I also find troubling, and I have been talking about this for decades, is the knee-jerk partisanship with which pundits and politicians on the left and sometimes the right respond to mass shootings.
President Clinton blamed the Oklahoma City bombing in part on Rush Limbaugh. Liberal pundits and later The New York Times blamed the mass shooting in Tucson on a Sarah Palin political map that the gunman never even saw. But when a liberal Bernie Sanders supporter and Rachel Maddow fan wounded Steve Scalise and others five years ago at a Republican congressional Republican baseball practice, the media didn't blame Maddow or left-wing philosophy, and they shouldn't have.
Yet after mostly black shoppers were gunned down in that Buffalo supermarket, people who don't like this network, or compete with this network unleashed this constant barrage. It's partially Fox's fault.
[cuts to video montage]
RACHEL MADDOW: It's not even a new pretext, a new justification for violent, racist terrorism. It has long been so. It is right now being newly-popularized, newly mainstreamed by the biggest names in conservative media.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Those conspiracies pushed by a former President, House Republican leaders, social media monopolies and a powerful cable news network.
CHRIS HAYES: This vision of the country belonging to some set of Repub–of Americans, white Americans, right, is only growing on the right. And you can hear it on any given night on Fox News.
[Cuts back to live]
KURTZ: A chief target has been Tucker Carlson. Now his comments on immigration and politics, and those of anyone at this network are, of course, fair game for public debate, but blaming him for the shooting is absurd.
The latest case of a blood on your hands approach to finger-pointing, even if you're Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer trying to score political points by attacking Fox. By the way, there's nothing in the suspect's hundreds of rambling pages that indicates he has ever watched one minute of Fox News.
