This week’s Liberal Media Scream features the hard-to-believe claim on CNN, of course, that President Trump’s regular criticism of the liberal media to his right-leaning fans is to blame for the attacks on the press covering the violence linked to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
On Sunday’s Reliable Sources on CNN, Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik held Trump accountable for the attacks on journalists by those protesting police misconduct over the weekend.
“Let’s not leave Trump out of this conversation,” Zurawik told host Brian Stelter. “What he’s done the last four years of encouraging people to hate the press” is “a large factor in the attacks on press that we’re seeing on the streets today.”
Zurawik on the May 31 Reliable Sources:
“Let’s not leave Trump out of this conversation. What he’s done the last four years of encouraging people to hate the press, ‘enemy of the people,’ ‘scum of the Earth,’ using those rallies, it’s a weapon he used, and we see the effects, I think. I’m not totally blaming him, but it’s a large factor in the attacks on press that we’re seeing on the streets today.”
Brent Baker, vice president of research for Media Research Center, explained our weekly pick: “I didn’t notice many MAGA hat-wearers in the crowd, which attacked the CNN building in Atlanta, nor in those outside the White House who menaced the crew from the Trump-friendly Fox News Channel. But Zurawik can’t help but see everything through the lens of his disgust for Trump, so if it’s bad, Trump must have caused it.”
Rating: Four out of five screams.
