The Patriot Post® · NYT Recycles Fake News to Blame the Right

In an astonishingly tone-deaf article, the editorial board of the New York Times on Wednesday ran a story entitled “America’s Lethal Politics.” It can only be classified as leftist propaganda. The obvious goal of the screed was to absolve the Left of any blame for contributing to the mindset of the crazed leftist who attacked congressional Republicans, while at the same time blaming those on the Right for essentially causing the problem of politically motivated violence.

To make their case, the Times’ editors recycled their own fake news from six years ago — the infamous and thoroughly debunked assertion that the mentally ill Jared Lee Loughner, who attacked and severely wounded Rep. Gabby Giffords and killed six others, was motivated by “rhetoric on the right” and Sarah Palin in particular. “The link to political incitement was clear,” the Times editorialized Wednesday. Honestly, the level of hypocrisy displayed by the Times’ editorial board is quite frankly dumbfounding. Not only was it evident that Loughner suffered from mentally illness, it was also well established that what little political convictions he had were so muddled as to defy being classified, and that he was not motivated by politics.

But that information was evidentially too nuanced for the Times. Its editorial board needed to blame Loughner’s attack on conservative political rhetoric and specifically Palin so as to further their carefully constructed narrative that the Right and its defense of the Second Amendment is responsible for all this hatred and violence.

The Times eventually “corrected” its editorial to delete the “link to political incitement was clear” verbiage, but the editors kept the reference to Palin and her map — and thus the implication that she was still to blame. When lies are trotted out as a means of furthering a political agenda, those peddling the lie can no longer be seen as trustworthy or legitimate. The Times’ editors are not journalists but leftist activists who clearly care little for reporting the truth. Is it any wonder Americans no longer trust the mainstream news media?