Media Matters - The politicization surrounding the killing of two New York Police Department officers over the weekend was amazingly swift. Fox News led the right-wing media charge, immediately claiming Democratic elected officials were somehow responsible for the gun rampage, which began in Baltimore when Ismaaiyl Brinsley allegedly shot his ex-girlfriend, and extended to Brooklyn when the mentally troubled shooter assassinated two police officers, before killing himself on a city subway platform.
On Fox, hosts and guests were sure who was to blame for the tragedy; not the gunman necessarily, but political and community leaders like President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, Mayor Bill de Blasio and MSNBC's Al Sharpton. Why? Because the men, to varying degrees, have spoken out about the troubled relationship between law enforcement and the black community, and raised concerns about two recent high-profile cases, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, in which unarmed black men were killed, and police officers responsible were not indicted.
Against that backdrop of civil protest, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik told Fox News, "I personally feel that Mayor de Blasio, Sharpton and others like them, they actually have blood on their hands."
Progressive Review - To give this trend some context, there have been over 21,900,000 media mentions of the NYC cop killings recorded by Google. Meanwhile, when a right wing survivalist shot a cop in Wisconsin last September it only produced 13,400 news citations on Google. And when a racist skinhead killed a cop in 2013 in Wisconsin there have been only 23,000 citations.
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