Death Threats and Vandalism

The story immediately following the passage of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment to the Health Care Bill HR-3962, and the passage of the entire Bill itself on March 21, 2010, had an odd set of heroes and villains.

The story: death threats and vandalism directed toward congressional representatives that voted for HR-3962.

Many different news sources have covered the story, with much information and many narratives that overlap. But I discovered some of the most interesting narratives and connections at work in the following pieces.



The story about death threats began running in the news as part of the larger story of Rep. Robert Stupak's Health Bill compromise. The Ammedment was highly controversial, and aroused deeply rooted anger in some Americans. The CBS narrative at 1:45 in the video describes public telephone calls to Stupak as "death threats from pro-life callers": the CBS examples were in no way indications of threats to kill or harm Stupak, but insults and ill-wishes toward him.
The story frames these "threats" as words of pro-life callers; directly laying responsibility for these "threats" on the heads of anti-abortion conservatives - portraying them as the villains in the story.
The CBS report identifies other "victims" of this anger/violence: Rep. Louise Slaughter, who recieved a phone call describing an ambiguous killing of HR-3962 Yea voters' children, and Rep. Gabriel Giffords. The report sympathizes with the victims by showing overwhelming images of the destruction to Gifford's office, alongside her portrait, and displaying her statement of plight.

The villains of the story, continue to be identified. The report allows Democrats take on the role of the untarnished, eligible to point fingers. The report says that "Democrats accuse the GOP colleagues of inciting such acts with inflammatory rhetoric". The rest of the report is dedicated to supporting that claim.

A Republican's shouting of insult "baby-killer" toward Stupak during debate is used by CBS as an example of why Republicans are responsible for threats against Stupak and his colleagues, by a public. While it does reveal anger by pro-lifers, it does not prove inciting violence in the public. The report implies that this Republican is responsible for violence/has committed a grave sin by saying that "he was far from contrite". Also, the report selects a line from his campaign web ad of the Texas representative who made the remark; The selection of "I will never quit speaking on behalf of the unborn" strategically ties pro-lifers and conservatives to the offensives committed by those hating Stupak.

The report then vilifies Tea Party activists - already frequent targets of media news outlets and commentators. Through a website, two Virginia activists encouraged others to "drop by" the house of Democratic Congressman Perriello to protest. The tone of the announcer at this point is mildly sinister, implying that these activists used these words negatively - to allude to violence. The CBS report then described the activists' encouragement with the headline: "congressional threats". These activists are then portrayed to be responsible for an act of vandalism against a Democrat - a severed barbecue gas line at the house.

The report then targets Sarah Palin as an inciter of violence, with Palin's "violent words and imagery". Her tweet metaphor "don't retreat, instead reload" is cited as an example of her inciting violence. This portrayal is a stretch as conflict imagery is almost universal in politics: "kill the bill", "the fight on Capitol Hill", "the speaker fires back", "White House prepares a media offensive", "war on terror", "battle for Health Care" etc. The assumption that these metaphors, because they are used by Sarah Palin and thus they must be violent, is a stretch intended to produce a narrative blaming conservatives for the "threats" and "violence" against these victims.

Seamlessly following the report about the "threats", the narrator highlights Congressional Republican's attempts to derail the Health Care Bill - tying in these unacceptable threats upon Democrats with Congressional Republican's legislative ammendments - this creates bias by association, portraying Republicans in the Senate as being similar to the perpetrators of intimidation and vandalism. The reporter and anchor discussed the procedure of the heath care bill and the vote, lumping in the persistent anti-conservative narrative with the coverage of HR3962 in Congress. The fact that these threats are not a story in themselves, but a part of the Health Bill's story, indicates a villification of all forces aligned against HR3962.

The narrative was designed to portray conservatives and their Republican representatives are responsible for the violence - combining responsibility for committing the attacks together with responsibility for "inciting" such violence. At the same time, the report created archetypes of victims, while using our innate sympathy for victims in a story to elevate Democrats to a position, supported by the framing of the story, where they can point fingers.

On The Side:
To contrast the previos report, a brief CBS report, about half way through, describes the attacks as bi-partisan, and directed against members of both parties, and voices the argument that Democrats are responsible for inciting violence.

A Fox News news article reported the physical intimidation against Congressman as well, supporting Rep. Eric Cantor's argument that Democrats are somewhat responsible for such violence: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/25/rep-cantors-richmond-campaign-office-shot-overnight/