Closing out Friday afternoon’s CNN Newsroom, host Brooke Baldwin closed with a lengthy, tear-filled commentary tacitly promoting the need for gun control, expressing disgust with anyone who’s not a liberal (like her), and further underlying the liberal media’s penchant for instilling fear in racial minorities and the wider public that they could be mass shooting victims.
She started off on the right note by correctly stating how it’s “been a horrible week for America” and that she could never have predicted in her two-decade career that she and her colleagues would be finding themselves simultaneously covering two mass shootings.
Baldwin then pivoted into punditry, fretting that she’s “worried that it might not be the last unless there is real change in Washington” (read: massive gun control and/or confiscation).
“Today the President went on vacation, Congress is already on vacation, and despite calls for them to return, Mitch McConnell says it can wait until but here is what is happening while they're away. People of color, Latinos, afraid to leave their house,” she added, teeing up two clips of Hispanics in El Paso bolstering her point.
She asserted that she fully “expect[s] we will keep seeing scenes like” those this past week in Times Square and Utah where passerby’s mistook loud a motorcycle backfire as a sign respectively falling for gun fire.
Through tears, Baldwin stated that they are not evidence of a media-fueled state of fear but instead “national anxiety” and sat in silence for a few seconds after this clip from President Trump, as if to express her displeasure before concluding (click “expand”):
TRUMP: Well, my message to young children going back to school is go and really study hard and some day, you'll grow up and maybe be President of the United States or do something else that’s fantastic. They have nothing to fear. They have nothing to worry about.
BALDWIN: I want to leave you with the words from a school-age child. This is Skylin. She lost her mother in El Paso and then she asked her grandmother, is my dad dead? Yes. She had to be told her stepfather, the man she called dad was also dead. And she responded with tears in her eyes and then asked this question about the killer. Is he going to come a shoot me? Skylin is 5 years old.
For CNN and the rest of the anti-Trump media, they’re not only willing to but thrive off of causing their Resistance viewers and ethnic minorities to cower in fear. Yes, it goes back to the classic media adage of “if it bleeds, it leads.”
If they can find a way through angry panels, hours of coverage, ominous chyrons, or sad music, Jeffrey Zucker’s CNN and their competitors will do it. “Americans on Edge.” “America Under Assault.” “Fear in America.” Yes, be afraid. Very afraid.
If there’s a way to take a horrible tragedy and cause people to think that merely walking outside their doors will get them deported or shot and killed, so be it. Because, in the Trump era, the name of the game is convincing as many people as possible that Orange Man Bad.
When those living in America are left to spend their days shaking in fear and watching CNN, they’ve done their jobs because they’ve long decided to not deliver the news and instead worry about storylines, heroes, villains, winners, and losers.
Sure, people may feel like crime is on the rise, but the facts state otherwise. A Pew Research Center article from January 3 had five conclusions:
- Violent crime in the U.S. has fallen sharply over the past quarter century.
- Property crime has declined significantly over the long term.
- Public perceptions about crime in the U.S. often don’t align with the data.
- There are large geographic variations in crime rates.
- Most crimes are not reported to police, and most reported crimes are not solved.
On point one, Pew found that “[u]sing the FBI numbers, the violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2017” and property crime was down 50 percent in that span. A Washington Post database found that 1,196 people have been killed in mass shootings since 1966 through last weekend. Back in 2015, a Healthline article pegged the risk of dying in a mass shooting at “around 1 in 110,154 — about the same chance of dying from a dog attack or legal execution.”
But that’s not for CNN to emphasize to viewers. As a result of the wall-to-wall coverage, it’s bound to lead to the perception that mass shootings are bound to happen to them, leading to false alarms.
Think it applies to just mass shootings? Wrong. The same principle could be applied to the media-assisted Black Lives Matter movement going after police officers. National Review’s David French wrote about this at the time and was a great read.
Is radical extremism a problem? Yes. But there’s a difference between something being a problem and something for people to live in constant fear of.
The liberal media may try to argue that its Fox News that’s the real fear-mongerers and should be condemned for their behavior even though, in reality, it’s CNN, MSNBC, the broadcast networks, and major papers that should look in the mirror first.
To see the relevant transcript from August 9's CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin, click “expand.”
CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin
August 9, 2019
3:56 p.m. Eastern[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Americans on Edge; Latinos Live in Fear, Crowds Panic After Mass Shootings]
BROOKE BALDWIN: This has been a horrible week for America. I never thought in my 20 years in journalism that I would get a call last Sunday morning from my boss asking me to go cover a mass shooting and I actually had to ask the question, which one? And then for three days I stood there in Dayton, Ohio, on a street where blood was still splattered on the sidewalk in front of a bar where nine people were murdered and there I was co-anchoring with my colleagues in El Paso, ping-ponging back and forth between one mass shooting to the next. That was a first for me and I am worried that it might not be the last unless there is real change in Washington. Today the President went on vacation, Congress is already on vacation, and despite calls for them to return, Mitch McConnell says it can wait until but here is what is happening while they're away. People of color, Latinos, afraid to leave their house.
UNIDENTIFIED HISPANIC MALE: We've seen a lot of fear in the community because of that and — and because it is real now. You know, it’s not like we can't connect those dots and people know that they're in danger just because of the color of their skin.
UNIDENTIFIED HISPANIC FEMALE: We're being attacked and our government needs to step in.
BALDWIN: They will have to wait until September. While lawmakers are on vacation, I expect we will keep seeing scenes like this. Tuesday night here in — here in New York City in Times Square, a motorcycle backfired but that is not what people first thought.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE NEW YORKER #1: It was a very crazy moment. I thought somebody was shooting — shooting.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE NEW YORKER #2: If I didn't see the motorcycle, it would have definitely sounded like gunfire.
BALDWIN: That very same day, at a mall in Utah, a large sign fell but that is not what it sounded
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SHOPPER #1: We didn't know what was going on until somebody went in to tell them we need to leave the so we just basically ran.
BALDWIN: It is evidence of a national anxiety and what about the children and teenagers who are returning to school next week?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, my message to young children going back to school is go and really study hard and some day, you'll grow up and maybe be President of the United States or do something else that’s fantastic. They have nothing to fear. They have nothing to worry about.
BALDWIN: I want to leave you with the words from a school-age child. This is Skylin. She lost her mother in El Paso and then she asked her grandmother, is my dad dead? Yes. She had to be told her stepfather, the man she called dad was also dead. And she responded with tears in her eyes and then asked this question about the killer. Is he going to come a shoot me? Skylin is 5 years old.
