And the media wonders why more and more people distrust them.
It should never cease to amaze how much of the mainstream media, even in Mississippi’s media establishment, take every opportunity they can to collectively bash Mississippians and the state’s leaders, even in times of peril, but then complain because no one trusts them, people question their work, and generally dislike them unless you share their bias.
Take the incident on Monday when a white man in a white truck with Ohio plates pulls up near the beach on Highway 90 in Gulfport and rushes over to a NBC News crew reporting on the impact of Hurricane Ida, angrily shouting, “You’re going to report this accurately, right?”
What can be heard from the audio indicates that the man was aggressively heckling NBC reporter Shaquille Brewster and the NBC News crew over reporting with accuracy. Brewster is black. No racial or other comments can be heard. But as social media does, such claims have been made in large part because, well, it happened in Mississippi.
Now, there is no question that this man is acting crazy and unhinged. He was obviously disturbed. The Gulfport Police Department put out a request for the public to help identify the man not long after this occurred, and he was soon identified. However, the police have not released his name or said officially whether any charges were pending at this time.
Y’all Politics has learned this morning from a source that this man was kicked out of a coast hotel because of his irrational and belligerent behavior. All indications are that he is from Ohio. A source tells Y’all Politics that the man in question could be charged with simple assault, disorderly conduct and violation of curfew.
Yet, without having all of the facts but armed with loads of hyperbole, the liberal mainstream media weaponized the incident and wasted no time at putting Mississippians in their crosshairs. They took to social media and their own platforms to blame the man’s actions on the state’s conservative political ideology, Governor Tate Reeves’ recent exposure and push back of the liberal media in Mississippi, and even former President Donald Trump’s refrain of “fake news.”
Here are two of the most egregious attempts thus far to use the actions of one man from Ohio as justification to attack Mississippians, Republicans, Tate Reeves and Donald Trump. There will likely be others as social media trolls gladly perpetuate the leftist narratives being put forward by supposedly “nonpartisan” news outlets and their staffs.
Adam Ganucheau from Mississippi Today
Ganucheau is the Editor-in-Chief at Mississippi Today. He and his outlet’s prejudice against conservatives, especially Governor Reeves, has reached a fever pitch as of late. Ganucheau writes:
“This national embarrassment, unfortunately, is the product of the political climate that has been sown in Mississippi for months. We’ll soon know more about what truly motivated that man, but as I watched the replay of the attack, it was difficult to separate it from Mississippi’s top elected official’s recent comments about the press.
“Gov. Tate Reeves has used his platform in recent weeks to antagonize journalists, to cast doubt about truthful reporting of his response to the uber-politicized COVID-19 pandemic, and to paint the press as the enemy of Republicans…
“…Crediting Reeves alone for this behavior doesn’t reflect reality. Reeves, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, has taken several chapters from the Trump playbook.
“I’ve covered five Trump rallies in Mississippi. Each one included some level of disparagement of the press, including by the president himself. At a 2018 Southaven rally, Trump went after a reporter by name. I sat next to her, and the vitriol that came her way the rest of the night from dozens of rally attendees was just disgusting.”
Seeing video of @shaqbrewster being accosted today, it was difficult not to dwell on the rhetoric about the press we've heard recently from Gov. Tate Reeves.
This is a product of the political climate that has been sown in Mississippi for months.https://t.co/0T8xyWLCmc
— Adam Ganucheau (@GanucheauAdam) August 31, 2021
Ashton Pittman of the Mississippi Free Press
Pittman is the Senior Reporter for the Mississippi Free Press. His outlet, like Mississippi Today, has a strong bias against conservatives and the state’s Republican leaders. He posted this on Twitter:
I don't know what this guy was yelling for exactly. But the Trump-era culture of broad anti-media sentiment is real. Then you have Qanon, spreading conspiracy that everyone in the media meets with Hollywood stars & Democratic polticians to communally drink the blood of babies.
— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman) August 30, 2021
Frank Corder
