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An astonishing thing seems to have happened to the case of Richard Poplawski and the three dead Pittsburgh policemen: It's been turned into a story about dog pee -- and not about the fact that Poplawski was fueled by a toxic mix of white-supremacist/conspiracy-theorist paranoia and mainstream-media fearmongering, including from the likes of Glenn Beck and Fox News.
Maybe the media are collectively embarrassed by the way this case demonstrates how they play an important role in whipping up the far-right crazies out there -- and they should be. Because not only did Richard Poplawski avidly participate in white-supremacist online forums and right-wing conspiracy-theory sites, he also avidly consumed mainstream conservative media, particularly Fox.
The classic instance of this: A few weeks ago, Poplawski posted a clip of Beck talking about FEMA concentration camps on the neo-Nazi Stormfront forum site. (You can see the clip from the show in question above.)
Eric Boehlert at Media Matters noticed yesterday that the New York Times completely ignored the white-supremacy aspect of the story, running an AP story that only briefly alluded to Poplawski's paranoiac fears and instead focused on the dog-pee-on-the-carpet angle. David Waldman at Daily Kos noted a similar trend.
Malaika2012 drinks dog pee?
Minionuup 2 years ago