I seemed to recall a different mise-en-scène involving a premeditated political assassination whose aftermath resulted in multiple other injuries and fatalities. A quick visit to a heavily annotated Wikipedia entry confirmed my remembrance;
The shooting took place on January 8, 2011, at 10:10 am MST (17:10UTC).[1][14] A United States Representative from Arizona, Gabrielle Giffords, was holding a constituent meeting called "Congress on Your Corner"[12][15] at the Safeway supermarket in La Toscana Village mall, which is in Casas Adobes, an unincorporated area north of Tucson, Arizona.[16] Giffords had set up a table outside the store and about 20 to 30 people were gathered around her when Jared Lee Loughner drew a pistol and shot Giffords in the head.[17][18][19] The shooting was caught on video by a store security camera.[14][20]
That's a pretty straightforward story. It took effort on the part of the reporter to reverse the order of events and erase the political foundation of the story. Why frame an attempted political assassination that ended up being a mass shooting as a random violent outburst that just happened to involve a Democratic politician?
Gosh, what a mystery!
NPR is such a beaten dog they automatically approach any story involving Democrats with an eye toward appeasing the flying monkey brigade of the right wing. Even when it's not a winger militia nut, but some crazy guy with a Giffords obsession. It's inscribed in their version of the Hippocratic Oath- in place of "first do no harm" they observe the credo "first, tailor the story to appease a rabid, vocal minority of right wing nuts".
I love my local public radio station and all of the local programming they generate. I realize how fortunate I am in our current digital age of automated everything to be able to tune in a radio station with actual DJs who pick their own music and share their personal passion with the audience.
But the corporate entity that goes by NPR can piss straight off a cliff.
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