If Bill O'Reilly vs. Jon Stewart is kind of a joke, MSNBC vs. journalistic integrity is a serious fight--and in that particular fight, MSNBC's loose ethics seem to be winning. And that this is a scandal.
On Tuesday, MSNBC showed a closeup of a man carrying a gun--two guns, actually--to an Obama event in Phoenix. The guns were legal under Arizona law, albeit perhaps a tad provocative. But MSNBCers Contessa Brewer, Dylan Ratigan, and Toure clucked away for a while about the implications of a "white person" carrying a gun at an Obama event. It was obviously "racial politics" of a most intimidating kind, said Brewer.
But it was all a lie. The man with the guns was black. Although MSNBC cropped the image so that its viewers couldn't tell his race. And so MSNBC thought that it was free to rip into gun owners, and middle Americans.
Fortunately, Newsbusters' Kyle Drennen was all over it, getting all the facts out on the table. And now the video has gone on to YouTube immortality. Here's Drennen's report:
On Tuesday, MSNBCs Contessa Brewer fretted over health care reform protesters legally carrying guns: "A man at a pro-health care reform rally...wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip....there are questions about whether this has racial overtones....white people showing up with guns." Brewer failed to mention the man she described was black.
Following Brewers report, which occurred on the Morning Meeting program, host Dylan Ratigan and MSNBC pop culture analyst Toure discussed the supposed racism involved in the protests. Toure argued: "...there is tremendous anger in this country about government, the way government seems to be taking over the country, anger about a black person being president....we see these hate groups rising up and this is definitely part of that." Ratigan agreed: "...then they get the variable of a black president on top of all these other things and thats the move the cherry on top, if you will, to the accumulated frustration for folks."
Not only did Brewer, Ratigan, and Toure fail to point out the fact that the gun-toting protester that sparked the discussion was black, but the video footage shown of that protester was so edited, that it was impossible to see that he was black. The man appeared at a health care rally outside of President Obamas speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix, Arizona.
