Media covering up alleged shooter's liberal politics?

Accused Arizona gunman, Jared Lee Loughner

Are the news media deliberately disguising the reported liberal politics of Jared Lee Loughner, the suspected gunman in yesterday's fatal shooting that left six dead and gravely injured a U.S. congresswoman?

WND was first to report that Caitie Parker, who went to high school, college and was in a band with the gunman, labeled Loughner as "quite liberal" and "more left" on her Twitter account.

It was that Twitter posting that first prompted ABC News' Jack Tapper to send out a Twitter message of his own, asking publicly how he can get in touch with Parker.

ABC News online today quoted a "high school classmate" of Loughner's, apparently Parker, as saying "he was extremely political in high school, but not radical."

The ABC News online article does not state which kind of politics Loughner ascribes to.

In her Twitter postings, Parker wrote of Loughner, "As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal and oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy."

She also described him as "more left."

As noted by Newsbusters, Parker was interviewed today on ABC's "This Week," yet the network did not even ask Parker about Loughner's political leanings.

Newsbusters provided the following transcript:

PIERRE THOMAS, ABC SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: One friend [Loughner] did manage to make, Caitlin Parker, said he became more peculiar in recent years. She recalled a strange encounter he once had with [the] wounded congresswoman.

Advertisement - story continues below

CAITLIN PARKER: As I knew him more and more after high school, he got a little bit more odd. I mean, he was obsessed with the 2012 prophecy. I mean, he met Gabrielle Giffords once in '07 and told me he asked her some question that made absolutely no sense to me, but he said, "I can't believe she doesn't understand it. Politicians just don't get it."

WND reviewed a Newsweek article that quotes Parker only in the context of her telling the news agency Loughner had apparently met Giffords once in 2007 and described her as "stupid and unintelligent." The article does not cite Parker's Twitter postings.

Meanwhile, scores of news outlets are implying former Governor Sarah Palin may have helped to create an environment that contributed to yesterday's shooting.

An Associated Press article, for example, notes that Palin's Facebook page had posted a U.S. map with the crosshairs of a gun scope imposed over Giffords' district as a "targeted" seat in the 2010 mid-term elections.

The article then quotes Giffords as saying, "The way that [Palin] has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize there are consequences to that action."

In an MSNBC column, Keith Olbermann took it further: "If Sarah Palin, whose website put and today scrubbed bull's-eye targets on 20 Representatives including Gabby Giffords, does not repudiate her own part in amplifying violence and violent imagery in politics, she must be dismissed from politics."

Olbermann also criticized Giffords' former political opponent Jesse Kelly, Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., former Senate candidate Sharon Angle and talk hosts Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly for supposedly encouraging violence.

Olbermann's blame did not, however, extend to the men actually listed by Loughner as among his favorite authors, Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler.