Shameless Media Manipulation of Theater Shooting

ABC News’ Brian Ross should be fired immediately.

The blood was not yet dry. The bodies were not yet removed. The identity of the suspect in custody was barely yet revealed by the police.

None of this stopped Brain Ross, veteran investigative TV journalist for ABC News, from mentioning on Good Morning America that the suspected shooter may have been a member of the Colorado Tea Party Patriots political organization.

The shooter’s name is James Eagan Holmes. Brian Ross, the sleuth, quickly determined first thing in the morning that a James Holmes had joined the Tea Party last year. Ross acknowledged that it might not be the same James Holmes.

Really? Do you think there could be more than one James Holmes in the Denver area? In fact, a quick online search on the part of Brian Ross could have shown him that as many as 25 men named James Homes live in the Denver metropolitan area! This includes two people named James Holmes in Aurora, one in his 20s (the shooter) and one in his 50s (the Tea Party member).

Ross is not the only member of the media that quickly moved the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado into a partisan issue, accentuated by references to the need for more gun control (see: Bloomberg calls on Obama, Romney to discuss guns) – again, before the bodies had even been removed from the crime scene.

This is the same tired narrative that the national news media on the left dusts off every time there is a tragic shooting attack.

When six people were killed and many more were injured, including Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, in a shooting rampage in early 2011, there was a rush to implicate Republicans for using campaign language about “targeting” incumbents in office.

When the Virginia Tech shooting took the lives of 32 people, a massacre that experts agreed was enacted by a psychopath, Democrats rushed to blame the tragedy on lax gun control.

Guns are to blame for the tragedy in Aurora no more than the opening night premier of the Batman movie that was playing in the theater at the time of the shooting. A deranged person is going to seek a way to take lives one way or another.

His party registration is not to blame. Fictional violence, which is more gratuitous and senseless in today’s movies and video games than ever before, has little to do with the actions of an evil madman as well.

No one can grasp or explain the senseless tragedy that occurred in Colorado (see: Colorado Shooting: Mitt Romney), least of all the people directly impacted and those who lost loved ones.

One thing is for sure though: members of the media who predictably and immediately use such tragedies to advance their warped political agendas have no shame (see: Tea Party Patriots Call on ABC News and All Media to Stop False Reporting).

They should be fired, now.

Photo credit: ABC News