Recently, a Michigan home owner was charged with shooting and wounding an 84-year-old woman who was canvassing door-to-door against a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to abortion in the state.
Also within the same week, a pregnancy center in Oakland County, Michigan was vandalized with the message “‘If abortion is not safe neither are you” which represents the second time this year the pregnancy center has been targeted. (RELATED: RONNA MCDANIEL: Biden’s Wretched Speech Against Republican Voters Reveals His One True Weakness)
A week before that, two volunteers for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s reelection campaign were assaulted while knocking on doors in Harris county, Texas. Additionally, Republican offices of the Larimer County Republican Party in Fort Collins, Colorado, and the Ottawa County Republican Party in Hudsonville, Michigan, have been vandalized.
Two weeks before that incident, the Republican party office in Seminole county Florida was vandalized in graffiti with the phrase “eat s*** fascists.” The commonality that all of these incidents share? They took place right after President Joe Biden’s speech in Philadelphia that further divided our nation. Coincidence?
To refresh your memory, last month, President Joe Biden delivered a speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that the White House regarded as a speech for the continued “battle of the soul of the nation.” Standing in front of a dimly lit red background with marines standing behind him, Biden drew the proverbial line in the sand between the Democrats and the rest of America.
In his speech, the president asserted democracy and equality was under assault and the very foundation of the republic was under attack. Under attack by who? “MAGA Republicans.”
To this day, there has not been a clear or concrete definition of what a “MAGA Republican” is; however over the last few years, among liberals, Democrats and the media, the label has carried an implication of political extremism. President Biden and many other Democrat sympathizers hyperbolically assert the GOP is full of extremists who are a clear and present danger to our democracy.
Then on Sept. 18th, 2022, the worst of the attacks against Republicans occurred when 18-year-old Cayler Ellingson was allegedly killed by a drunken motorist by the name of Shannon Brandt. According to court documents Brandt, who fled the scene after hitting Ellingson with his SUV, told police that Ellingson belonged to a “Republican Extremist” group.
He was soon released on $50,000 bond and is due back in court on Oct. 11, 2022. As of the publishing of this article, neither President Biden nor Democrat officials that have parroted the harmful narrative of “MAGA Republicans” have publicly denounced any of these attacks against their political rivals.
If the roles were reversed and a Republican President and other Republican elected officials went on record to denounce and ostracize “extremist Democrats,” and weeks later a Democrat was murdered by someone who claimed the victim was part of a “Democrat extremist” group, there would be media attention around the clock.
Elected officials would call for a national conversation around domestic terrorism, and most of all, Americans would not hear the end of the rhetoric that white supremacy is a threat to our democracy.
Yet with the killing of Ellingson, the silence from corporate media has been deafening. So much in fact, when the incident was first reported, national news networks including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC did not dedicate a single second of air time to it. Nor did The New York Times or The Washington Post cover the story in depth; as they would have if roles were reversed.
This double standard, perpetuated by one-sided “journalism” is actually a legitimate threat to our democracy. For when media organizations choose sides — whether it’s in covering elections, issue debates, or alleged political violence — they forfeit the public trust given to them by the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Our Founders knew a free press was necessary to hold public figures and public institutions accountable, and inform the people of news and information needed for them to live their lives. However, a one-sided media is not media at all, because it becomes invested in certain outcomes and narratives, it’s just another political entity.
If journalists would consider it legitimate to raise questions about the impact of a Republican president’s words, even to the extent of inspiring violence, shouldn’t they raise the same question about a Democratic president’s rhetoric? And won’t the refusal to do so only encourage more extreme and hyperbolic attacks?
This is an actual threat to democracy and doesn’t serve the American people, who the media claim to represent. It’s no coincidence the public’s approval of the media has dropped to record lows.
The overwhelming majority of Americans abhor political violence and brutality, whether it’s the murder of an innocent protester in Charlottesville, Virginia, or violent ANTIFA attacks on law enforcement in Portland, Oregon. Or the alleged murder of a teenager.
American media will only regain the public’s approval and respect when it gets back to even-handed, unbiased coverage that’s not invested in particular outcomes or narratives.
Barrington Martin II is a national co-director of Our America.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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