MSNBC Provides 'Exhibit A' on What Happens When Inconvenient Facts Disrupt Media Narratives

Unquestionably, the claim by the Colorado “Club Q” mass shooting suspect’s attorneys that the person identifies as “non-binary” and not a MAGA devotee has sent The Usual Suspects in the mainstream media into an absolute tailspin.

Some are conveniently pivoting, suggesting that the tragedy is still the fault of the supposed “anti-LGBTQ” rhetoric from right-wingers because of the possibility that the suspect may have been motivated by online hate allegedly directed at them. Others seemed shocked by the report of the shooter identifying as “non-binary” so much so that they suggested in so many words that it must be a lawyerly ruse designed to get the person off the hook for the hate crime charges that are reportedly being filed against them.

But over at MSNBC, they were singing a different tune, as evidenced by a Wednesday segment of “MSNBC Reports” in which anchor Lindsey Reiser, who is married to a woman, and her panelists – including the interim deputy legal director for LGBTQ rights at the fraudulent Southern Poverty Law Center – simply ignored the story of how the suspect is said to identify and continued on with the narrative that “right-wing hate” was behind the senseless murders of five people:

Lindsey Reiser (MSNBC): Because after the shooting, far-right Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert who [has] previously labeled trans people and drag queens as “groomers” tweeted “the news out of Colorado Springs is awful, this lawless violence needs to end and end quickly.” But then fast-forward to now and we have from our NBC affiliate in Denver, KUSA, Boebert on a radio show this week vowing to continue her anti-trans rhetoric and rejecting calls from critics to be accountable for her words. Saying “it’s absolutely disgusting to try to blame this on me and try to say I’ve had bad rhetoric about the LGBTQ community. That is completely false.”

You’d think after something like this, the rhetoric would cool off. But what are you actually seeing?

Scott McCoy (SPLC): Yeah, unfortunately, that’s not the case. In the end, you can’t spend years and years and midterm elections and all this time demonizing LGBTQ people, working to pass anti-LGBTQ legislation federally and across the states, and then try to inoculate yourself against the charge that you’re a part of this problem by simply tweeting “oh this is a tragedy and it’s terrible that it happened.”

What we’ve seen throughout the last year and even before and certainly in midterm elections is a concerted effort by right-wing people like her and other influencers to drum up anti-LGBTQ sentiment and to motivate voters to go to the polls. And these right-wing influencers cannot just skate away and say, “sorry not us.” I mean that’s why they’re called influencers. They are attempting to influence the people that listen to them with their rhetoric and words and motivate them to do something. And so they should or – they should know that their words and their rhetoric can have consequences.

And I think no one should be surprised that when you throw that kind of vile rhetoric out into the world you can’t just expect nothing to happen.

McCoy concluded by advocating for the supposed “right-wing influencers” to be punished for the role they supposedly play in “hate crimes” when they happen.

“…but we need to start thinking about, what are the accountability measures that we can take against these right-wing influencers to hold them accountable for their part in what’s happened here,” he said.

Watch:

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— Kevin Tober (@KevinTober94) November 23, 2022

This is the same exact script the media followed locally and nationally after the Pulse nightclub murders in Florida in June 2016, where so-called reporters blamed North Carolina’s HB2 “bathroom bill” in part for the the despicable actions of Omar Mateen who in reality had pledged allegiance to the terrorist group ISIS and reportedly did not even know Pulse was a gay nightclub and picked it because it wasn’t well-guarded.

For years now – and well-before Donald Trump took office – the mainstream media has been experiencing a credibility crisis brought on not by any politician but by their own actions, where they’ve repeatedly pushed bogus political narratives without waiting for the actual facts. And then once the actual facts come in, the same “news” outlets rarely revisit the stories to correct themselves.

MSNBC isn’t the first network to do this and it won’t be the last time that they and other media outlets engage in the very types of behavior that causes the public to distrust them even more. The especially sad thing about all this, beyond the murders of the Club Q attendees, is that most in the MSM simply don’t care that they’re spreading a false narrative. They’ll just keep on keeping on in hopes that one day their tactics pay off.

While sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, the end result is that trust in the media will further plummet – and when all is said and done, they will have no one to blame for that lack of trust but themselves.