The Intelligencer whitewashes any Trump connection from an AP article on yesterday’s attack at the Capitol

On page 6 of this morning’s Wheeling Intelligencer, you’ll find the following article:

Man Surrenders After Claiming To Have Bomb Near Capitol

What follows is the beginning (the first 40%) of an AP article on yesterday’s terrorist threat to the Capitol. The Intelligencer version describes what happened but provides very little background on the suspect beyond noting that he was hostile to President Biden. As for his motivation, the original AP article clearly suggests that the suspect was upset about how the presidential election had been decided but that is missing in the local article. For example, the AP features the word “Trump” four times, but Trump is completely missing from the Intelligencer version. Here, for instance, is the first paragraph that the Intelligencer cut:

Videos posted to Facebook before the page was taken down appear to show Roseberry at the Nov. 14 Washington rally attended by thousands of Trump supporters to protest what they claimed was a stolen election. One video appears to be filmed by Roseberry as he’s marching with a crowd of hundreds of people carrying American flags and Trump flags and shouting “stop the steal.”

My hunch is that the editors of the paper would argue that when the papers switched to a larger font, it meant that fewer details would be included in the stories they cover. It must be coincidental, then, that every time I compare the Intelligencer version to the AP’s original, they’ve cut something important out of the article. Readers who depend upon the Intelligencer for their news were clearly short-changed.

What about Fox News?

From Media Matters:

An analysis by Media Matters found that Fox News only covered the story for a total of about 23-and-a-half minutes on Thursday. Nine of those minutes came just after the suspect surrendered, when Fox aired a few minutes of live coverage of the Capitol Police briefing, followed by further commentary by a Fox News correspondent. Following that block, the story received only 40 seconds total of acknowledgment for the rest of the evening, in just two brief news headline treatments. There has been no coverage thus far today, as of noon EDT.

And not only did Fox News give scant coverage to the story, but the network then covered up the suspect’s motives by claiming they were “unknown” — even though the suspect, Floyd Roseberry of North Carolina, had used Facebook to livestream his own rantings, which were reported by plenty of other news outlets.

Reacting to the terrorist attack, Alabama congressman Mo Brooks says he understands “citizenry anger.” How did his congressional colleagues react?

At 2:22 PM, Brooks tweeted:

My statement on the Capitol bomb threat: pic.twitter.com/yCuTNTbJyP

— Mo Brooks (@RepMoBrooks) August 19, 2021

I looked for Republican’s condemning Brooks’ reaction – surely there must be some who would be willing to criticize a fellow member for sympathizing with a terrorist. Here’s what I found. From NBC News:

GOP Rep. Mo Brooks slammed by fellow lawmakers for statement about D.C. bomb threat suspect

Reviewing the article, the only Republican listed or quoted was Trump critic Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.

And from today’s Washington Post:

Lawmakers denounce GOP Rep. Brooks for appearing sympathetic to Capitol bomb threat suspect

Once again, only Kinzinger is mentioned on the Republican side.

(Ogden did not cover Brooks' statement and according to Vox, neither did Fox News.)

Readers can imagine the reaction by Republicans, Fox News, and Ogden’s editorial page if a Democrat had said anything close to what Brooks said. By the way, we are not done with Brooks -- he will be running for Senate next year.