Target recently found itself in the middle of a cultural firestorm completely of its own making. As RedState reported, the retail giant decided to celebrate “pride” month by prominently displaying LGBT clothes and swimsuits for children. One online social media influencer alleged that some of the swimsuits were “tuck-friendly,” though Target has insisted the ones for sale were for adults only (as if that makes it better to promote a deranged ideology like transgenderism or something).

Much like the Bud Light situation, Target initially doubled down before deciding to move the merchandise to the back of its stores. They cited “threats” to employees as the reason.

Soon enough, headlines started to circulate that bomb threats were being made against Target stores in places like New York, Vermont, Utah, and Oklahoma. For example, The Hill pushed out a story on Tuesday entitled “Target Stores in at Least Five States Receive Bomb Threats Over Pride Items.” A day prior, The Washington Post ran the headline “Target Stores See More Bomb Threats Over Pride Merchandise.” USA Today also used the same type of lede in its prior reporting.

If someone were to read those headlines without any prior information, what would they think? They would obviously think that right-wing activists were calling up Target stores to make bomb threats due to the retail chain’s display of “pride” items. After all, it is the right that has moved to boycott Target.

But what’s the real story?

You don’t hate the mainstream press enough. pic.twitter.com/7380Szsdf4

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) June 13, 2023

Here’s the excerpt from The Hill piece, written halfway through the article, with my emphasis added. The Washington Post’s article includes the same disclaimer buried deep in their story.

South Burlington, Vt. police chief Shawn Burke said that news outlets in Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York all received the same email bomb threat over the weekend, which accused the retail chain of betraying the LGBTQ+ community, also naming the locations of four stores in the three states including South Burlington.

Every single mainstream media outlet that I’ve found reporting on this story has buried the lede in the same way. They’ve all written headlines making it appear that the bomb threats are over the “pride” items when in reality, the bomb threats are over Target responding to the conservative boycott of their stores.

And don’t kid yourself, these press outlets know exactly what they are doing when they do this stuff. It’s a manipulative game they play where they post something that’s somewhat technically correct (though, not really) while framing it in a way that is willfully misleading. Meanwhile, the reluctantly admitted facts placed deep in their articles don’t get read or, as in the case with the Post, are paywalled so most can’t read them.

However much you despise the mainstream press, you simply don’t despise them enough.