In yet another clear sign of media bias, The Washington Post framed an article about a Leftist punching a conservative in the face to make clear only the Right was “enraged.”
The article, titled “A conservative activist was punched in the face at UC Berkeley. The response enraged the right,” is the first and only article the media outlet has published on the attack.
Background: On February 19, an activist working for the Leadership Institute was on the University of California-Berkeley’s campus helping conservative group Turning Point USA recruit students. The activist, Hayden Williams, was not a Berkeley student but was helping recruit when two men approached him on campus and began cursing. One became aggressive and pushed Williams before punching him in the face.
The encounter was caught on video and published by LI’s Campus Reform website. Williams told Fox Business host Stuart Varney that the men confronted him over a sign posted by TP USA that said, “Hate crime hoaxes hurt real victims,” a reference to the Jussie Smollett allegations which are being treated as a hoax by Chicago police.
A week after the attack, Berkeley officials said police had identified a suspect and were preparing to arrest him and charge him with a felony. While police appear to have acted properly, national media outlets treated the story far differently than they did Smollett’s allegations. Newsweek, for example, reported Smollett’s allegations as fact, despite multiple red flags that the story was not plausible. When video of the attack at Berkeley surfaced, Newsweek reported that a conservative student was “allegedly assaulted.” It would be nice to assume the outlet learned from the mistakes of the Smollett case, but given the media’s track record it seems unlikely.
Berkeley also waited days to condemn the attack, something that doesn’t happen on college campuses when an alleged racist incident occurs. The Post tried to wash over this by saying the university condemned the attack “within days,” as if that were an appropriate amount of time to wait.
A campus-wide email about the assault wasn’t sent until conservative activists complained on Twitter.
The Post’s article follows a long line of “Republicans pounce” or “Republicans seize” headlines from the outlet and others that are used to report news that hurts Democrats. The headlines are used to avoid directly addressing the harmful news, and are instead reported from the angle of how Republicans reacted to the news. Such couching is not done in reverse.