Liberal media praise disruptive Tennessee state lawmakers as heroes
The media loves controversies, but a recent controversy in the Tennessee House of Representatives gave them ample fodder to peddle a false narrative.
The Tennessee House of Representatives expelled two Democratic Party state lawmakers, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, in a vote along party lines because of their role in participating with a crowd of protesters who disrupted official proceedings. A third lawmaker, Gloria Johnson, barely survived her expulsion vote because she was not participating in the yelling or shouting.
Jones and Pearson joined the protesters in the gallery section, and despite warnings to stop their disruptive behavior, continued to do so. Leaders among the body of lawmakers convened and then stopped the proceedings due to the disruption.
Their conduct violated the state legislature’s rules on decorum and civility by being active and vocal participants in disrupting proceedings, which is the reason behind their expulsion, according to state GOP lawmakers.
The expulsion of state lawmakers in Tennessee is rare, having happened three times since the end of the American Civil War. And, according to a local news outlet NewsChannel 5, in 1866, “six lawmakers were removed after they tried to prevent Tennessee from ratifying the 14th Amendment which gave citizenship to former slaves.”
The media went so far as to dub the trio of lawmakers as the “Tennessee Three” to try to equate their left-wing, disruptive activism with the civil rights movement. Many ran with the nickname in its headlines, such as the Washington Post, Politico, the Daily Beast, Axios, and even C-SPAN.
To make matters worse, local media outlets like The Tennessean, WSMV and WKRN did the same.
Jones and Pearson claimed that the Tennessee Republicans were racist to expel them because they are black males. The third lawmaker who was not expelled, Johnson, is a white woman.
It shows that once the liberal media finds a eye-popping headline, no matter the truth behind it, that they will fall into line and parrot the same narrative.
We must remind our readers that Americans have worsening confidence in the mainstream media, which is almost as low as Congress. Yet, somehow, the media still views itself as the neutral arbiter of the news, but their actions are far from fair or equal.
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Don Irvine
Donald Irvine is the chairman of of Accuracy in Academia (AIA), a non-profit research group reporting on bias in education. Irvine follows his father’s legacy, Reed Irvine, to critically analyze the liberal media’s bias and brings over thirty years of media analysis experience. He has published countless blog posts and articles on media bias, in context of current events, and he has been interviewed by many news media outlets during his professional career. He currently hosts a livestream weekly show on AIA’s Facebook page which discusses current events.
Irvine graduated from the University of Maryland and rose up the ranks to become chairman of Accuracy in Media until his transition to AIA.
He resides in the suburbs around the nation’s capital and is a proud father and grandfather.
