{"id":206050,"date":"2015-12-04T12:13:50","date_gmt":"2015-12-04T12:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=206050"},"modified":"2015-12-04T12:14:30","modified_gmt":"2015-12-04T12:14:30","slug":"san-bernardino-massacre-perception-propaganda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/san-bernardino-massacre-perception-propaganda\/","title":{"rendered":"San Bernardino Massacre: Perception\u00a0and\u00a0Propaganda"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The reaction to the San Bernardino shooting in which 14 people were killed<br \/>\nand several more wounded is a textbook case of confirmation bias. The first<br \/>\nreactions came from the liberal wing of the Twittersphere, heavily represented<br \/>\nby \u201cmainstream\u201d journalists, who immediately took the incident to be a classic<br \/>\n\u201cmass shooting\u201d of the Sandy Hook-Columbine variety, and it didn\u2019t take long<br \/>\nfor the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/contributor\/2015\/12\/new-york-daily-news-just-made-one-helluva-perfect-statement\">finger-wagging<\/a><br \/>\nto begin. At once pro-gun control and anti-religious, the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChrisMurphyCT\/status\/672176555859296256\">meme<\/a> went<br \/>\nout into cyberspace: \u201cthoughts and prayers\u201d aren\u2019t enough, we need to crack<br \/>\ndown on gun ownership in this country. The <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NYDailyNews\/status\/672234341800521728\">front page<\/a><br \/>\nof the <i>New York Daily News<\/i> expressed the left-liberal party line: \u201cGOD<br \/>\nISN\u2019T FIXING THIS: As latest batch of innocent Americans are left lying in pools<br \/>\nof blood, cowards who could truly end gun scourge continue to hide behind meaningless<br \/>\nplatitudes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As it turned out, however, the guns used by Syed Farook and Tashveen Malik,<br \/>\nthe two perpetrators, were bought legally \u2014 and their weaponry consisted of<br \/>\na lot more than mere guns. The editors of the <i>Daily News<\/i> didn\u2019t wait<br \/>\nfor the facts because they didn\u2019t care about the facts. They just wanted to<br \/>\nmake a point \u2014 one which turned out to be not only wrong but also completely<br \/>\nbeside the point.<\/p>\n<p>In the same city, in the offices of a very similar \u2014 if ideologically opposite<br \/>\n\u2014 tabloid, the editors of the <i>New York Post<\/i> were jumping the gun in an<br \/>\nentirely different direction. As the ethnicity and religious affiliation of<br \/>\nthe attackers came out, they ran with a simple two-word headline: \u201cMUSLIM KILLERS,\u201d<br \/>\nwith a modifying qualifier: \u201cTerror eyed as couple slaughters 14 in Calif.\u201d<br \/>\nAs more information came out, however, the editors pulled back, and the final<br \/>\nedition was quite different: \u201cMURDER MISSION,\u201d read the headline, with a neutral<br \/>\nsupplementary: \u201cShooters slaughter 14 in Calif.\u201d These two editions were published<br \/>\nhours after the incident, and only a few hours apart \u2014 a testament to the dangers<br \/>\nof jumping to conclusions.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/ny-post.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2012323713\" src=\"http:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/ny-post.jpg\" alt=\"ny-post\" width=\"545\" height=\"289\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/justin\/2015\/12\/03\/san-bernardino-massacre-perception-and-propaganda\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The reaction to the San Bernardino shooting in which 14 people were killed and several more wounded is a textbook case of confirmation bias. The first reactions came from the liberal wing of the Twittersphere, heavily represented by \u201cmainstream\u201d journalists, who immediately took the incident to be a classic \u201cmass shooting\u201d of the Sandy Hook-Columbine [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-206050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}