The press blamed Christian conservatives for the Pulse nightclub shooting. It was a vicious smear.
The June 12, 2016, Pulse nightclub shooting is, among other things, a searing indictment of the national press’ eagerness to believe the absolute worst about the Right and about Christians in particular. It was casually assumed that the gunman, Omar Mateen , targeted Pulse specifically because it was a gay bar. But even more than that, his avowed Islamic State affiliation was overlooked so that certain reporters, pundits, and editorial boards ( ahem, New York Times ) could claim that the shooting was motivated by conservative U.S. politics and "an effort to approve discrimination against gay and transgender people nationwide under the guise of religious freedom." So, this is how an Islamic terror attack was blamed on American conservatives and Christians. Some outlets went even further, concocting a conspiracy theory that the Pulse shooting had nothing to do with Islamic terrorism — that Mateen was an uncomfortably closeted homosexual and a regular at Pulse,...