By James F. Tracy
Are major Western news media complicit in the staging of so many recent and curious mass shooting and “terrorist attack” events? A simple answer would be “Yes,” if only because journalistic outlets collectively (and perhaps intentionally) fail to thoroughly interrogate these events and the potential motivations of individuals and institutions directly involved in such incidents, in particular those wielding unprecedented oversight with the most at stake–federal government and law enforcement agencies.
This is especially so because the storylines and evidence offered to demonstrate events including the Sandy Hook massacre, the Boston bombing, the Umpqua College “shooting,” the San Bernardino “terrorist attack” and most recently the Orlando nightclub shooting event are so weak and implausible that journalists and the public alike, with an Orwellian combination of cognitive dissonance and fear, automatically place even modest critical faculties in abeyance and defer to state officials taking turns at the podium.
Sometimes, however, the media’s deceit is much more forthright. For example, one may conclude that strong evidence along these lines exists if a major newspaper chain inadvertently publishes a detailed story on a mass shooting across its platforms from a major wire service before the event has transpired. This appears to be what Canada’s Postmedia did with an Associated Press story its outlets published one day before the San Bernardino incident allegedly took place. The posts, captured in screen shots here, have since been scrubbed from the company’s sites.