On Sunday night, far-left activists (including an SPLC attorney) stormed the site of an Atlanta Police Department training facility and fired off fireworks and Molotov cocktails in the latest attempt by the so-called “Stop Cop City” movement to physically attack and threaten law enforcement. But on the Monday morning flagship morning shows, CBS Mornings couldn’t be bothered with zero seconds during their actual newscast.
Instead, CBS Mornings only gave it six seconds in the show’s “Eye Opener” using a clip of NBC’s Early Today and single sentence from co-host Philip Mena. When far-left thugs previously attacked Atlanta police late on Saturday, January 21, CBS’s morning show also had zero interest the following Monday and likewise buried it in their Eye Opener, which is usually used for teases.
Just as we saw in that incident, ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today went the other way and had full reports for a combined five minutes and 51 seconds. However, neither provided an ideological label for the mob, but tried to excuse it as “outside agitators” who “used the cover of a peaceful protest”.
ABC co-host Michael Strahan announced in the first tease there was “chaos in Atlanta” as “[m]ore than 100 people clash[ed] with police” and “used the cover of a peaceful protest to carry out a coordinated attack on police officers at the so-called Cop City.”
Co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos opened the show with the riot and tossed to correspondent Steve Osunami, who said it originated during an event for Defend the Atlanta Forest and consists of “mostly environmentalists who have been trying to save a wooded area and have argued that the new training center would militarize police.”
In other words, more than just environmentalists worried about Bambi.
He added that protesters “had just left a nearby music festival” before deciding to lob “explosives and Molotov cocktails at police officers and set equipment on fire.” Interspersed with clips from the Atlanta police chief, Osunami said “more than 100 people” were part of the “coordinated attack”.
The ABC reporter later concluded his segment (which was largely rehashed in the second hour) by acknowledging January’s incident and “that this new police center was approved by both Republicans, Democrats across the city and state, white, black, and brown.”
Stephanopoulos covered it again in the second half-hour with a news brief that again refused to label the miscreants as leftists and instead defended the anti-cop movement saying those that carried out the attack “used the cover of a peaceful protest, which included a music festival, to conduct a coordinated attack on officers and equipment.”
NBC’s Today was only marginally better, though they too steered clear of any leftist label.
“Breaking overnight, violent clash. Protesters in Atlanta attacking officers and damaging property at the construction site of a police training center,” co-host Savannah Guthrie announced in a tease.
Correspondent Blayne Alexander had the full report from the Peach State and called the training ground “the center of controversy for months now” denounced by “critics” as “Cop City” and wouldn’t “improve community policing.”
She continued, playing down the attack due to the presence of what “police point to” as “outside agitators” and humanized the anti-police movement as “concerned about the center’s environmental impact, and its symbolism as one of the nation’s largest law enforcement training centers” (click “expand”):
ALEXANDER: Overnight in Atlanta, a chaotic clash between protesters and police. All on the site of a planned police training facility. Officials say protesters burned construction vehicles and a trailer and set off fireworks towards officers stationed nearby.
SCHIERBAUM: This wasn’t about a public safety training center. This was about anarchy and this was about the attempt to destabilize.
ALEXANDER: Police point to a group of what they call outside agitators saying they left an event nearby, changed into black clothing, and mounted a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers. It’s just the latest flash point after months of demonstrations against the facility organized under the slogan Stop Cop City, the planned 85-acre campus just outside of Atlanta. Protesters say they’re both concerned about the center’s environmental impact, and its symbolism as one of the nation’s largest law enforcement training centers. Tensions between protesters and police in the city have been at a boiling point for months now with past demonstrations in January also turning violent and fatal with one protester killed.
Later, she ended by touting a statement from “one of the groups that opposes that facility” as they decried police for using “‘excessive force’ to break up what they call a family-friendly music festival”.
Monday’s bias by omission and slanted coverage was made possible thanks to advertisers such as Ensure (on CBS), Hilton (on ABC), and VRBO (on NBC). Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant transcript from March 6, click here (for ABC) and here (for NBC).
