Will Bunch: A passive media will be a 'contributing factor' on U.S. democracy's death certificate

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A passive media will be a ‘contributing factor’ on U.S. democracy’s death certificate

From the Paul Pelosi assault to GOP fearmongering on crime, mainstream media hasn't risen to meet 2022's dire threats to democracy, writes @Will_Bunch

inquirer.com
A passive media will be a ‘contributing factor’ on U.S. democracy’s death certificate
From the Paul Pelosi assault to GOP fearmongering on crime, mainstream media hasn't risen to meet 2022's dire threats to democracy.
11:57 AM · Oct 30, 2022

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/media-2022-midterms-democracy-threat-20221030.html

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The crime was every bit as shocking as the initial news bulletins on Friday morning: A man had broken into the San Francisco home of the highest-ranking Democrat in U.S. government — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — and ultimately attacked and seriously injured her 82-year-old husband, Paul, with a hammer in a bizarre incident.

It’s still early in the investigation, and there are certainly a lot of unanswered questions about exactly how the incident went down. That said, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes — or even Inspector Clouseau — when it comes to discerning the attacker’s motive. It turns out that 42-year-old David DePape left a 15-year-long paper trail of clues about his right-wing political hate and misogyny on his blog, including a recent focus on the Big Lie of 2020 election fraud. The clincher is that police say DePape broke into the residence hoping that the House speaker, who was out of town, would be present, shouting “Where is Nancy?!”

If that phrase sounds painfully familiar, those exact words were uttered by the Jan. 6 insurrectionists who ultimately occupied and trashed Pelosi’s office in the U.S. Capitol and even stole her laptop in the midst of their failed coup. For the last 21 months, the voices of those most worried about the precarious state of American democracy have warned that right-wing extremists would try to finish what they started that day. Here now is the most tangible proof yet that violence remains the cutting edge of these growing threats to the American Experiment, in the most advanced assassination plot against a high-ranking official in more than 40 years.

Yet 3,000 miles away on the West Side of Manhattan, the editors of the nation’s most influential media outlet, the New York Times, apparently weren’t feeling it. In laying out the next day’s front page of the so-called paper of record, Times journalists did squeeze the attack on Paul Pelosi onto the very bottom right, with a headline — “Pelosi’s Husband Is Badly Injured in a Hammer Attack by an Intruder” — devoid of any political import.

*snip*