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The Daily Mirror Goes Full ‘Boston Bomber Groupie’ in Its Coverage of Nashville Shooter

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As a sign of just how ill-thought they were at Daily Mirror, there were two attempts and two deletions of this backdoor praise of the murderer.

Normally in the wake of a tragedy like the Covenant Christian School shooting, there is an effort made to diminish the details of the individual behind the murders. Glorifying their acts and making them into something of a dark celebrity has long been something worth avoiding. Yet following the massacre in Nashville, our warped press complex has taken a different turn, and this is exposing the soulless nature of the industry.

Note the amount of coverage seen lately shielding the trans community and accusing those mentioning the nature of the shooter of “targeting” an already oppressed subclass. Lost in all of this has been empathy and concern for the victims. As I pointed out in my recent Lie-Able Sources podcast, this case brings about a killer the press cannot criticize, and Christian victims for whom they cannot sympathize, so they are left flailing as they grapple with what to do with their fervent coverage.

As bad as so much of the media coverage has been, we may have reached the nadir. The Daily Mirror saw fit to explore the background of the killer of six at Covenant, and they managed to paint a picture of an individual with pleasant and artistic tendencies. Yes, seriously. They even went so far as to describe the artwork alluded to with the use of the term “childlike,” for the killer of three children on March 27.

This is a disturbing level of journalistic malpractice that calls to mind another infamous episode of the press glorifying domestic homicidal goons. Recall following the killings at the Boston Marathon when Rolling Stone Magazine featured a glowing boy-band-level glossy of the bomber? 

The Daily Mirror at the least has deleted the piece, after receiving significant scorn over its fawning coverage, but not without some struggle. The outlet managed to make three attempts at selling this misguided bio of the killer. This means as a news outlet, it was intent on putting out this level of warmth and understanding. We are left to ponder the motivation for this move. Was it fealty to the trans activists? Hostility towards Christianity? An attempt to suggest a noble soul was corrupted by the acquisition of weaponry?

This crass move follows something we have seen plenty of in the past week with media outlets. In a fashion very similar to the narratives seen over the years with domestic terror episodes and the press lecturing us on the dangers of backlashes against Muslims and the baseless claims of a rise of “Islamaphobia,” now the trans community is receiving similar treatment. Look at the number of reports seen concerned with that community poised to be threatened, as if they were the real victims and not the six lives eliminated.

Whatever the motivation, the Daily Mirror displays a sharp disconnect seen throughout journalism. The practices of respectful humanity are bypassed blithely as more and more, we see outlets shown to be slaves to their narratives, as decency and truth are cast aside freely for the sake of maintaining the messaging.

So when decency is so readily dispatched it leaves us with the obvious conclusion that our journalism industry is only becoming more indecent.

The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.

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The Daily Mirror Goes Full ‘Boston Bomber Groupie’ in Its Coverage of Nashville Shooter

by Leave a Comment

As a sign of just how ill-thought they were at Daily Mirror, there were two attempts and two deletions of this backdoor praise of the murderer.

Normally in the wake of a tragedy like the Covenant Christian School shooting, there is an effort made to diminish the details of the individual behind the murders. Glorifying their acts and making them into something of a dark celebrity has long been something worth avoiding. Yet following the massacre in Nashville, our warped press complex has taken a different turn, and this is exposing the soulless nature of the industry.

Note the amount of coverage seen lately shielding the trans community and accusing those mentioning the nature of the shooter of “targeting” an already oppressed subclass. Lost in all of this has been empathy and concern for the victims. As I pointed out in my recent Lie-Able Sources podcast, this case brings about a killer the press cannot criticize, and Christian victims for whom they cannot sympathize, so they are left flailing as they grapple with what to do with their fervent coverage.

As bad as so much of the media coverage has been, we may have reached the nadir. The Daily Mirror saw fit to explore the background of the killer of six at Covenant, and they managed to paint a picture of an individual with pleasant and artistic tendencies. Yes, seriously. They even went so far as to describe the artwork alluded to with the use of the term “childlike,” for the killer of three children on March 27.

This is a disturbing level of journalistic malpractice that calls to mind another infamous episode of the press glorifying domestic homicidal goons. Recall following the killings at the Boston Marathon when Rolling Stone Magazine featured a glowing boy-band-level glossy of the bomber? 

The Daily Mirror at the least has deleted the piece, after receiving significant scorn over its fawning coverage, but not without some struggle. The outlet managed to make three attempts at selling this misguided bio of the killer. This means as a news outlet, it was intent on putting out this level of warmth and understanding. We are left to ponder the motivation for this move. Was it fealty to the trans activists? Hostility towards Christianity? An attempt to suggest a noble soul was corrupted by the acquisition of weaponry?

This crass move follows something we have seen plenty of in the past week with media outlets. In a fashion very similar to the narratives seen over the years with domestic terror episodes and the press lecturing us on the dangers of backlashes against Muslims and the baseless claims of a rise of “Islamaphobia,” now the trans community is receiving similar treatment. Look at the number of reports seen concerned with that community poised to be threatened, as if they were the real victims and not the six lives eliminated.

Whatever the motivation, the Daily Mirror displays a sharp disconnect seen throughout journalism. The practices of respectful humanity are bypassed blithely as more and more, we see outlets shown to be slaves to their narratives, as decency and truth are cast aside freely for the sake of maintaining the messaging.

So when decency is so readily dispatched it leaves us with the obvious conclusion that our journalism industry is only becoming more indecent.

The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.

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Who are the “people” protected by the Second Amendment?

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Does the right to keep and bear arms apply only to “law-abiding” citizens, and if so, then what’s to prevent state or federal governments from prohibiting gun possession for anyone who’s ever gotten a speeding ticket or smoked a joint (even in states where it’s legal)? Who exactly fits under the Second Amendment’s umbrella of protection for the right of “the people” to keep and bear arms? Those questions are at the heart of a case that could soon be heard by SCOTUS, and the ramifications of any Supreme Court decision are likely to have a major impact on the gun control debate going forward.

New York Times alumnus and retired Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse sees this case, known as U.S. v. Rahimi, a little differently. In her view, a rabidly conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel completely disregarded common sense and decades of precedent by ruling that a domestic violence restraining order issued against Zackey Rahimi could not bar him from possessing firearms. While the Fifth Circuit noted at the outset of its opinion that the central question of the case “is not whether prohibiting the possession of firearms by someone subject to a domestic violence restraining order is a laudable policy goal,” but whether the particular federal statute in question is constitutional. And in the Fifth Circuit’s opinion, it isn’t really a close call.

According to the Government, Heller and Bruen add a gloss on the Second Amendment that restricts its applicability to only “law-abiding, responsible citizens,” Heller, 554 U.S. at 635, and “ordinary, law-abiding citizens,” Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2122. Because Rahimi is neither responsible nor law-abiding, as evidenced by his conduct and by the domestic violence restraining order issued against him, he falls outside the ambit of the Second Amendment. Therefore, argues the Government, § 922(g)(8) is constitutional as applied to Rahimi.

… Heller explained that the words “the people” in the Second Amendment have been interpreted throughout the Constitution to “unambiguously refer[] to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset.” 554 U.S. at 580. Further, “the people” “refer[] to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community.” For those reasons, the Heller Court began its analysis with the “strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans,” , and then confirmed that presumption.

Heller’s exposition of “the people” strongly indicates that Rahimi is included in “the people” and thus within the Second Amendment’s scope.

The Fifth Circuit did acknowledge repeated references to “law abiding citizens” in the Heller and Bruen decisions, but said the Supreme Court was using that phrase as shorthand “in explaining that its holding (that the amendment codifies an individual right to keep and bear arms) should not “be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.” To assume otherwise would mean that your Second Amendment rights could disappear forever based on a simple traffic infraction or civil citation.

Indeed, the upshot of the Government’s argument is that the Second Amendment right can be readily divested, such that “a person could be in one day and out the next: . . . his rights would be stripped as a self-executing consequence of his new status.” But this turns the typical way of conceptualizing constitutional rights on its head. And the Government’s argument reads the Supreme Court’s “law-abiding” gloss so expansively that it risks swallowing the text of the amendment.

Further, the Government’s proffered interpretation of “law-abiding” admits to no true limiting principle. Under the Government’s reading, Congress could remove “unordinary” or “irresponsible” or “non-lawabiding” people—however expediently defined—from the scope of the Second Amendment. Could speeders be stripped of their right to keep and bear arms? Political nonconformists? People who do not recycle or drive an electric vehicle? One easily gets the point: Neither Heller nor Bruen countenances such a malleable scope of the Second Amendment’s protections; to the contrary, the Supreme Court has made clear that “the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans,” Heller, 554 U.S. at 581. Rahimi, while hardly a model citizen, is nonetheless among “the people” entitled to the Second Amendment’s guarantees, all other things equal.

As the Fifth Circuit panel pointed out, if the government really wanted to see Rahimi disarmed, there were other options available, including seeking to hold Rahimi behind bars  until his trial for five shootings in and around Arlington, Texas.; a step the government failed to take and allowing Rahini to walk free.

Greenhouse and other supporters of gun control see no issue with the lack of limiting principle in the government’s argument, and the columnist bemoans the current state of affairs in the courts, with the “interest-balancing” test used and abused by lower courts since Heller now off-limits to judges thanks to the “history, text, and tradition” test explicitly laid out by SCOTUS in Bruen. As she concludes her column:

There is no doubt that under the old interest-balancing test, the government would prevail. The interest in keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers is that obvious, as even the Fifth Circuit found in 2020. “The parties agree,” the court noted then, “that reducing domestic gun abuse is not just an important government interest, but a compelling one. They only dispute whether § 922(g) (8) is reasonably adapted to that interest. We hold that it is.”

The government’s petition points out that there are more than one million acts of domestic violence in the United States every year “and the presence of a gun in a house with a domestic abuser increases the risk of homicide sixfold.”

Will a fact like that matter to the Supreme Court? Do facts still matter at all? That may now be the most urgent question this case presents, not only to the court but to the country.

I have no idea what SCOTUS will do with Rahimi, and there’s a good chance they’ll do nothing at all; choosing to let the lower courts debate among themselves before stepping in to adjudicate any circuit split at some point in the future. But Greenhouse is fundamentally off-base when she says that the Rahimi case is about “how far the Supreme Court will go to arm America.” At its most basic level, the case is about who, exactly comprises “the people” whose right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

CNN Defies Itself in Its Own Article, but It Concerns Ron DeSantis so This Is Acceptable

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When it comes to the governor of Florida, accuracy at CNN is not nearly as important as the negative hype around Ron DeSantis.

This is becoming such a predictable pattern that the press is operating as if it is acceptable behavior. They come out with an audacious story, level accusations, and then move on once the details are revealed to show something else. It becomes more of a problem when this dichotomy between the charge and the facts takes place within the confines of the same article.

As Jeff Charles covered here late last week — and should have known better (kidding!) — a principal in Florida was let go concerning a lesson in the school regarding the classic sculpture, Michelangelo’s David. As Jeff reported, the principal told the Tallahassee Democrat that she was let go when a parent complained that the depiction of the nude form was presented in a class. But as we are now learning, the story is “evolving,” and the testimony from the school board and the woman fired, Hope Carrasquilla, has shifted as more information comes out.

This new information is something that CNN provides, and yet the outlet elected to still go with a rather slanted headline. Here is how the case is presented by the outlet.

The way this is all presented sounds like Florida schools have become more repressed than the town council in “Footloose,” and more restrictive than the police authorities in “Demolition Man.” But as we then see, CNN gives quite a different take in the body of the piece, and that headline might be the masterwork of parsing language.

“A charter school principal in Tallahassee, Florida, did not follow procedure before a lesson on Michelangelo’s statue of David was given to sixth graders,” begins this piece, and already we get the sense of the writers couching things in a particular manner. This is not a declaration of the classroom content being a problem, nor is it exactly saying that the content led to the firing. So what actually is happening?

It turns out that rather than being an infraction that enraged the morality police, this was a case of final-straw internal infractions. The problem was not, as originally detailed, uptight parents taking action against an administrator, it was a refusal by Carrasquilla to follow protocol. It was the policy of the school to simply notify parents ahead if there was going to be any material possibly seen as objectionable, and the nude artwork being studied was considered to be thus. So notification ahead was protocol, not eradicating a classic artwork.

In fact, despite the blaring headline, CNN included this rather disqualifying quote from Barney Bishop, the board administrator dealing with the principal. “She was not let go because of Michelangelo’s David lesson,” he said.

Furthermore, Carrasquilla changed her own version of events that she had detailed for the Florida news outlet. Instead, she describes a rather contentious relationship with the board during her tenure, one she seems to allude to having as much to do with herself.

Carrasquilla, the former principal at Tallahassee Classical School, told CNN that things had been escalating over the past year. “My board chair has not been happy with me,” she told CNN, adding that she did not always follow every policy and procedure.

(Okay, Jeff, you are cleared.)

Barney Bishop even attests that not only was this the case, but the principal was already more or less on her way out due to her past actions.

Agreeing with Carrasquilla’s assessment, Bishop told CNN that over time it had become evident the school needed to go in a different direction and with different leadership, and he had expressed that to her on many occasions.

He went on to say that displaying images of Michaelangelo’s David is something they have taught for years, and will continue to do so. “We aren’t trying to ban the picture,” he said about David. “We think it’s beautiful.”

And here is where the CNN presentation gets to be so cagey. The headline is technically accurate; Carrasquilla was let go after the statue lesson was presented, but she was not fired because of this lesson. So by thus hedging, the news outlet can claim to have not misled readers…even as they present things in just the right fashion to still appear to be slamming DeSantis over repressed school policies. 

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Rolling Stone Magazine Faces New Journalism Scandal After Misleading Readers in a Big Way

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Back in October, an ABC News reporter’s home was raided by the FBI. That producer, James Gordon Meek, then promptly disappeared from the public eye, leading to a lot of speculation.

Like other outlets, we covered the Meek home raid in October, with our own Jennifer Oliver O’Connell noting how chilling it is for a reporter to be “disappeared” by the feds so suddenly.

On April 27, 2022, the FBI raided Meek’s home and leaked the information that Meek had classified information on his laptop, which precipitated the need to conduct the raid. Purportedly, the warrant and the reasons behind the raid should be under seal; but such is the nature of this FBI.

The initial reporting on this story came from Rolling Stone, which had promoted its story on Twitter with the caption “Exclusive: Emmy-winning ABC News producer James Gordon Meek had his home raided by the FBI. His colleagues say they haven’t seen him since.”

The story itself stated that “Meek appears to be on the wrong side of the national-security apparatus.”

However, new information has come to light in the months since the initial story was released, calling Rolling Stone’s reporting into question. The problem isn’t the original author of the story, Tatiana Siegel. In her original drafts of the story, she included information she had gleaned from her sources: Meek was part of a federal investigation into images of child sex abuse.

Curiously, it was an editor at Rolling Stone, Noah Shachtman, who pulled that information from the story. Via NPR:

As a longtime national security reporter himself, Shachtman has periodically expressed to colleagues at various outlets his skepticism of the veracity of government sources. When Siegel detailed the seriousness of the allegations against Meek, Shachtman warned her against turning in a story that included the words “child pornography” in it.

[…]

The accounts given by the associates, colleagues and friends of the two key figures — Siegel and Shachtman — diverge here. According to what Siegel told others, Shachtman and she agreed that the article would reflect that the FBI’s interest stemmed from concerns of possible criminal behavior outside the scope of Meek’s work — that is, it had nothing to do with national security or journalism.

Shachtman later told others that he did not believe that she had nailed down her sourcing adequately. Rolling Stone parent company Penske Media notes that authority to make such choices for Rolling Stone‘s coverage lies with Shachtman. “That was true in this case, as reflected in the final edits to the story,” the company said in a statement to NPR. “Some material was added late in the process, other material was dropped.”

Siegel did not have as much of a say in the final product (the piece that was eventually published) as she was led to believe. She had taken leave to be with her ailing mother, though she and Shachtman stayed in touch and worked through the editing process together.

However, it appears that in the final draft, all references to investigations not related to Meek’s work as a national security reporter were pulled from the article. As a result, those of us who heard or read the story of James Gordon Meek only knew the details Rolling Stone provided.

In later reporting, the Daily Beast (an outlet Shachtman was an editor for prior to joining Rolling Stone) followed up on the story about Meek – and undercut Rolling Stone’s reporting in the process.

Rolling Stone’s big scoop last week, headlined “FBI Raids Star ABC News Producer’s Home,” read like a Tom Clancy thriller and raised serious concerns that the feds raided a journalist over his work.

However, there’s more to the story than meets the eye, ABC reporters, producers, and executives told Confider.

[…]

Inside ABC News, however, staffers were baffled by this framing, since Meek resigned from the network via email on April 27—the same day as the raid—citing “personal reasons” and told friends it was to “save colleagues and the company any embarrassment,” according to two people familiar with the situation.

Although the FBI declined to comment on the probe, the DOJ was more forthcoming, suggesting in a statement to Confider that the raid was not actually about Meek’s reporting work, despite what the Rolling Stone article seemed to indicate.

But had Siegel’s original reporting remained in the story, the Daily Beast’s reporting would not have been a brutal takedown but rather an affirmation of Seigel’s reporting.

Shachtman was not willing to run that information, however, and it seems that his professional relationship – bordering perhaps on friendship – with Meek may have been part of the reasoning there. More from the NPR piece:

Prior to Meek’s arrest, Shachtman considered Meek a peer with whom he was friendly, according to associates.

Shachtman has told colleagues that the two men travel in the same professional circles.

Shachtman boasts his own distinguished record as a national security journalist. Earlier in his career, he founded and led the national security blog Danger Room for Wired magazine. In 2010, the writer Spencer Ackerman referred in a post on the blog to “our friend James Gordon Meek.” Shachtman later worked for Foreign Policy magazine before becoming the No. 2 editor and then editor-in-chief at the Daily Beast.

Rolling Stone’s Troubled History

This is not the first time Rolling Stone has abused and discarded facts about a major story in order to (possibly) push an agenda. The magazine landed in serious hot water several years ago after publishing a “bombshell” report about a gang rape on the University of Virginia campus. That “bombshell,” though, turned out to be entirely fabricated.

That story led to a major defamation case against the magazine. They were found guilty, and the resulting damages ultimately resulted in the sale of the magazine.

Of course, the magazine has a well-known leftward bent, more recently calling Democrat Joe Manchin a destroyer of worlds and attacking ivermectin during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The case of Siegel’s report on Meek, however, isn’t so much a story of lefty reporting. It’s a story of the inherent corruption of the media in general. People naturally want to protect their friends and colleagues, but in some professions – like the supposedly objective profession of “journalism” – you must stick to the facts. Shachtman could not ignore the facts and instead chose to find reasons to dismiss them. Ultimately, that undercut the reporting his outlet was supposed to be doing.

Siegel has since left the magazine, heading over to the sister publication Variety. Good for her.