In 2011, Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords of Arizona was shot and six others were killed by a deranged gunman, Jared Lee Loughner. Immediately liberals trying to make hay out of the tragedy falsely linked Loughner to conservative causes. As it turned out, there were no links.

But last week in Alexandria, Virginia, on the same day a man with confirmed liberal leanings shot Congressman Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) and others presumably because of their conservative views, The New York Times‘ editorial board wrote about what they called “America’s Lethal Politics.” It included the discredited Gifford link and downplayed the politics of the Scalise gunman.

Dan Gainor of Media Research Center says it’s journalistic malpractice.

Gainor

“The top leadership of one of the nation’s allegedly most respected papers somehow didn’t realize that this disgusting allegation had been discredited,” he observed during an interview with OneNewsNow. “It’s almost without any concept of honor, fact, legitimacy, morality, ethics, or journalism.”

The newspaper tried to publish a correction, only saying no political motive was ever established in 2011, but it still kept the references to the Giffords shooting.

“They stated something that is factually wrong – and then their correction of it was not darn much,” Gainor stated. “Words failed them – and that’s the problem: they’re in the word business and they don’t know how to do it.”

The media watchdog says the Times‘ bias is leading it down a dangerous path. “There are forces pushing our nation closer to a cliff and the major media are not supposed to be the ones doing it,” he shared. “We’ve got major news outlets jamming our nation into a pressure cooker.”

Gainor’s boss didn’t mince words in reacting to the NYT’s editorial.

“The New York Times editorial board should be embarrassed by the flaming pile of garbage they published [about the shooting in Alexandria],” said MRC president Brent Bozell in a press release. “Even in the face of radical leftist’s attempted assassination of numerous members of Congress, they try to find a way to cast blame on … conservatives!”

Bozell described the editorial as an attempt to “score cheap political points.”