September 2021 | Messaging Matters

Monthly Archives: September 2021

Gabby Petito disappearance, homicide becomes politicized

Awareness for missing Native American women and girls

It seems everything in America nowadays gets politicized, from the food we eat to the movies we watch to our responses to a worldwide pandemic. So perhaps it’s not too surprising that the case of formerly missing travel blogger Gabrielle Petito, whose body has been found in what the FBI calls a homicide, has become politicized too. Specifically, after weeks of intense media coverage, including frequent discussion and wild speculation in social media, about the blonde, blue-eyed 22 year old Petito, some folks began mentioning that there are a lot of people of color also missing, who are not receiving a modicum of media coverage in comparison. For example, here’s Joy Reid of MSNBC talking about this yesterday:

“No one is looking for us.” With all the coverage on the Gabby Petito case, Joy Reid calls out the media’s obsession with missing white women, and calls it “missing white woman syndrome”. pic.twitter.com/FPbA3bHjNq

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) September 21, 2021

Other examples of this media phenomenon include the following:

“In the same area that Gabby Petito disappeared, 710 indigenous people— mostly girls—disappeared between the years of 2011 and 2020 but their stories didn’t lead news cycles …” https://t.co/HJ01B6CsRK

— Eugene Scott (@Eugene_Scott) September 21, 2021

https://twitter.com/hjelle_brian/status/1440381994475552781

I'm shaking reading about the discovery of Gabby Petito's body in Wyoming. While we're watching this case unfold, please take 5 seconds to read about Daniel Robinson, a geologist who went missing in the desert outside Buckeye three months ago. His father is still looking for him. pic.twitter.com/5RWrcMpMng

— Shayla Davis (@JournalistShay) September 20, 2021

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Tags: All Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter, Brian Laundrie, FBI, Gabby Petito, Gabrielle Petito, George Floyd, Larry King, Nancy Grace, racism

Kasie Hunt begins CNN tenure with ludicrous take on California recall election

Written on September 16, 2021 by Messaging Matters in Media Watch

CNN, where reporting gives way to feelings

Just one week after arriving at CNN after her stint at MSNBC, “analyst” Kasie Hunt came out with an unbelievably bad take when California Governor Gavin Newsom won his recall election in a landslide on Tuesday night:

CA GOV BIG PICTURE: One of the top Democrats in the country got caught living like an elite while everyone else suffered. Elites vs. the rest is the driving force in our politics right now and Democrats have a tough needle to thread both in California & nationwide … (1/)

— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) September 15, 2021

Hunt followed that up with:

Obviously California is a Special Place — but the fact that a Democratic national star in waiting *faced* a recall and then had to fight hard for it midway through the campaign does say a lot about the potential challenges Democrats face across the map (4/)

— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) September 15, 2021

And then, even though President Joe Biden had flown to California to help Newsom win impressively, Hunt couldn’t resist attacking Biden:

…especially if President Biden can't demonstrate he's capable of getting the resurgent pandemic under control, has another competence crisis a la Afghanistan, can't get his budget plan through Congress, etc. (fin)

— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) September 15, 2021

Leave it to the folks on Twitter, however, to set things straight. Here are a few of the many choice tweets that, to put it nicely, might make Kasie Hunt think twice about prioritizing “garbage takes” over solid reporting in the future:

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Tags: Afghanistan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Barack Obama, California, California Recall, Casie Hunt, Clint Eastwood, CNN, Fox News, Gavin Newsome, Larry Elder, MSNBC, President Joe Biden, Ronald Reagan, Sonny Bono, Twitter, Wolf Blitzer

Larry Elder California photo op goes horribly wrong

Written on September 10, 2021 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Good Government, Media Watch, Republican Messaging

Venice Beach, CA, where fools and conservatives are not suffered gladly

As we mentioned several weeks ago, there’s a phony Republican effort to recall California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, that garnered enough signatures to become a real special election on September 14. One of the Republican candidates vying to unseat Gov. Newsom is conservative radio talk show host and conspiracy theorist Larry Elder, who, because of his celebrity (can you say Arnold Schwarzenegger?), is considered the front-runner among the Republican candidates. However, it seems that either Elder’s political instincts or his campaign staff were not ready for prime time on Wednesday, when Elder, who showed up for a staged photo op at a homeless encampment on Venice Beach to criticize Gov. Newsom, instead quickly had to be hustled away from the scene, as the crowd yelled and cursed at him, and one person even threw an egg at Elder. Here is a tweet from ABC7 TV in Los Angeles, containing video footage of the incident:

#HappeningNow – the homeless who live on Hampton and 3rd Ave in #venice don’t seem happy to see @larryelder – some are shouting at him to leave and now following him as he tours an encampment @ABC7 pic.twitter.com/CLMVwKskES

— Josh Haskell (@abc7JoshHaskell) September 8, 2021

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Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, California, Gavin Newsom, homeless, Larry Elder, recall election, Twitter, Venice

Prominent right wingers being silenced by COVID

Written on September 1, 2021 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Fox "News" Watch, Media Watch, Republican Messaging

Anti-vaccine/anti-mask protester, August 2021

Three right wing radio hosts who railed against COVID vaccinations and masks have died of COVID just in the past month. They are Phil Valentine, Dick Farrel and Marc Bernier. They are joined by other prominent right wingers, including Caleb Wallace, a self-described anti-mask “freedom fighter” who treated himself with the livestock deworming medicine Ivermectin and died of COVID last Saturday at age 30, and H. Scott Apley, a Texas Republican Official who criticized and mocked COVID vaccinations, and who died of COVID in early August at age 45. It is unknown how many others these conservatives in the spotlight caused to die by influencing their followers not to get vaccinated and/or wear masks in public places.

Examples of the diatribes of these dead conservatives include Marc Bernier’s last tweet (his Twitter account has now been deleted), in which Bernier, referring to Democratic government officials who exhort Americans to get vaccinated, wrote:”Now the US Government is acting like Nazi’s” [sic]. Likewise, as to Phil Valentine, according to WTVF NewsChannel 5, Nashville, TN:

In December of 2020 he tweeted “I have a very low risk of A) Getting COVID and B) dying of it if I do. Why would I risk getting a heart attack or paralysis by getting the vaccine?”

He even recorded a parody song – Vaxman – mocking the vaccine.

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Tags: Caleb Wallace, COVID, Dick Farrel, Donald Trump, Facebook, H. Scott Apley, Herman Cain, Ivermectin, Marc Bernier, mask, Phil Valentine, Twitter, vaccine