On Sunday’s MediaBuzzHoward Kurtz, Fox News Channel’s host, opened his show with a tearful speech. He criticized the leftist media as well as Democrat politicians, for blaming Tucker Carlson and Fox News for the shooting in Buffalo.
Kurtz started by stating the obvious that the “murder of ten innocent people in Buffalo is utterly heartbreaking in so many ways.”
Yet what Kurtz also found troubling was “the knee-jerk partisanship with which pundits and politicians on the left and sometimes the right respond to mass shootings.”
He recited the entire list of domestic terrorist acts and mass shootings which the left had tried to put on the shoulders of conservative media people.
“President Clinton blamed the Oklahoma City bombing in part on Rush Limbaugh” Kurtz recalled. “Liberal pundits and later The New York Times blamed the mass shooting in Tucson on a Sarah Palin political map that the gunman never even saw.”
Revealing the left’s rampant hypocrisy, Kurtz noted how “when a liberal Bernie Sanders supporter, and Rachel Maddow fan wounded Steve Scalise and others five years ago at a Republican congressional Republican baseball practice, the media didn’t blame Maddow or left-wing philosophy.”
After airing an entire montage of rabid MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes and Joe Scarborough, who all joyfully claimed, without evidence, that the Buffalo shooter was motivated by Fox News and Tucker Carlson, Kurtz responded that Carlson’s “comments on immigration and politics, and those of anyone at this network are, of course, fair game for public debate, but blaming him for the shooting is absurd.”
He ended by correctly pointing out that “there’s nothing in the suspect’s hundreds of rambling pages that indicates he has ever watched one minute of Fox News.”
To read the relevant transcript click “expand”:
FNC’s MediaBuzz
5/22/2022
Eastern, 11:00:21HOWARD KURTZ – The brutal murders of ten people in Buffalo are heartbreaking. All victims were victims of a man whose writings are full of anti-semitism, racism and twisted thinking. What I find most troubling is, and this has been something I’ve discussed for many decades, the knee-jerk political partisanship that politicians and pundits on both the left and right react to mass shootings.
Rush Limbaugh was partly to blame for the Oklahoma City Bombing, according to President Clinton. Liberal pundits, and later The New York TimesThe mass shooting at Tucson was attributed to a Sarah Palin map, which the gunman had never seen. The media did not blame Maddow and left-wing ideology when Steve Scalise was attacked by a Rachel Maddow supporter five years back at an Arizona Republican Baseball practice.
After mostly black customers were shot to death in the Buffalo supermarket, those who do not like or want to compete with this network launched this barrage. Fox partially responsible.
[cuts to video montage]
RACHEL MADOOW: This is not a pretext or justification to justify violent and racist terrorism. It’s been this way for years. This is what the most prominent conservative media personalities are doing to make it more mainstream.
JOE SCARBOROUGH These conspiracies were pushed by former President, House Republican Leaders, social media monopolies, and powerful cable news networks.
CHRIS HAYES: This vision of the country belonging to some set of Repub–of Americans, white Americans, right, is only growing on the right. You can listen to it any night on Fox News.
[Cuts back to live]
KURTZ: Tucker Carlson has been a chief target. His comments about immigration and politics and the opinions of any member of this network can be discussed publicly, but it is ridiculous to blame him for the shooting.
A bloody hands approach to finger-pointing has been the latest in a string of cases. This is even though you are Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and trying to get political points for attacking Fox. The suspect has written hundreds of pages, but nothing that suggests he’s ever watched even one minute of Fox News.