Libs Freak Over Trump's Treatment of Liberal Media, But Will They Condemn This BLM Mob Terrorizing a Journalist?
A disturbing protest outside the home of a Minneapolis reporter last week highlights the mainstream media’s false narrative about President Donald Trump’s strained relationship with the national press corps.
Trump is openly antagonistic to outlets that are unfair to him and other Republicans, and he has used colorful words when describing some reporters, or when attacking the mainstream media as a whole.
But Trump faces a media that is no longer merely biased, but is aggressive in articulating its desire to see his downfall. If he didn’t fight back, he’d be finished.
Being a fighter by nature, Trump has hit the country’s mainstream media hard since even before his inauguration.
Even still, he’s never taken any action to silence outlets that openly oppose him, those that rely on misinformation, supposed “inside sources” and other methods to try to chip away at his credibility.
Describing a network as “fake news,” or generalizing the media as the “enemy of the people” does not equate to censorship or political violence.
But many in the media love to portray Trump as an autocrat who wants to plunge democracy into darkness by diminishing journalism.
If Trump truly sought to silence the media, refraining from taking questions from CNN reporters would be a good start.
But Trump continues to field questions from Jim Acosta and other fraudsters during news briefings.
What a tyrant!
The mainstream media’s portrayal of Trump is dishonest, as you’d expect, but what would reporters and editors in that same mainstream media do if leftists attempted to intimidate a reporter with actual violence?
If you guessed they would essentially ignore such a story, you’d be correct.
An Emmy-winning reporter and anchorwoman at WCCO-TV in Minneapolis named Liz Collin faced the fury of Black Lives Matter demonstrators last week, when her home in the Minneapolis suburb of Hugo, Minnesota, was targeted for a protest and a piñata bearing her likeness was walloped into oblivion.
This is endorsed Democrat John Thompson, campaigning for State House in district 67A in St. Paul.
This newly emerged video shows him beating an effigy of the Minneapolis Police Union President and his wife in their own driveway on August 15. pic.twitter.com/oJ90WuEmww
— Kyle Hooten (@KyleHooten2) August 17, 2020
The protest was led by a state House candidate named John Thompson, who yelled, among other things, “You think we give a f— about burning Hugo down?”
Collin is married to Minneapolis police union chief Bob Kroll, and for the Black Lives Matter left, that makes her fair game.
Minnesota digital news outlet Bring Me The News reported that when Kroll and Collin were targeted by the angry mob on Saturday, it wasn’t the first time.
“Kroll has been the subject of numerous protests since the death of George Floyd, with activists seeing his tenure as the head of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis as a barrier to addressing systemic problems within Minneapolis Police Department,” the outlet reported.
“But Collin has also been the subject of protest outside WCCO’s office in downtown Minneapolis, with activists criticizing the station for both her marriage to Kroll and her involvement in stories concerning the police, claiming it’s a conflict of interests,” the report added.
Leftist anti-police activists in Minneapolis have targeted a journalist with intimidation tactics, and the mainstream media, which so often accuses Trump without evidence of being a threat to freedom of the press, has been mostly quiet.
Aside from a few local journalists criticizing the Black Lives Matter protesters, those at the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists remained silent on the treatment of one of its own until this week, when it finally released a statement after public criticism.
The violent destruction of an effigy of a Minnesota journalist – @lizcollin – by protesters standing in the driveway of her home needs to be immediately denounced by the @mnspj and other journalists. This behavior is dangerous, harassing, and threatening. https://t.co/zcv78syp01
— Michael Brodkorb (@mbrodkorb) August 17, 2020
The message on the back of the effigy of Collin that was beaten in the driveway of her home referenced her work as a journalist. This violent protest was meant to intimidate a journalist in Minnesota. This behavior needs to be denounced by the @mnspj and other journalists. pic.twitter.com/FD1rd0KwsU
— Michael Brodkorb (@mbrodkorb) August 17, 2020
“Video has surfaced of a protest outside of WCCO reporter Liz Collin’s home, where a pinata replica of her was destroyed by protesters. The Minnesota Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists supports the public’s constitutional right to protest peacefully, but views the destruction of Collin’s image on her private property to be a direct threat against her as a journalist,” the MNSPJ wrote in a statement Wednesday.
It apparently took four days to come up with that.
Thompson, meanwhile, issued an apology, according to WCCO-TV, which is the city’s CBS affiliate.
The station did not attack the treatment of its employee, and the mainstream media largely ignored the event — the same media that portrays Trump and his supporters as existential threats to journalism in the United States.
When was the last time the president or anyone affiliated with him showed up to a reporter’s home and destroyed the reporter in effigy?
It hasn’t happened.
Trump has taken no actions to curtail press freedoms and still continues to take asinine bait questions from Acosta and others.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, an prominent journalist has been repeatedly targeted by Black Lives Matter activists, and it took her own media community four days to even address the issue.
The story is, of course, predictable.
Collin is married to a cop, and Thompson and the others Black Lives Matter “activists” belong to a group that is shielded from criticism by the media.
But this saga should be remembered the next time Trump is accused of encouraging violence against the mainstream media, simply by denoting it as “the enemy of the people.”
The mainstream media has proven, again this week, that it is at the very least the enemy of one of the core principals of journalism: A commitment to the truth.
The media cannot be bothered to report truth, even to defend one of its own, if it doesn’t follow the liberal narrative.
Black Lives Matter protestors attempting to intimidate a reporter in Minnesota does little to further a narrative that Trump wants to outlaw news reporting, so the story was suppressed.
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