Establishment media outlets have so often beclowned themselves by exposing their own biases that nothing they do surprises us.
Moreover, sometimes those biases manifest in unconscious ways, and this appears to be one such case.
On Friday, amid substantial backlash against its unfathomable callousness, MSNBC quietly inserted a new headline for a story about Wednesday’s courtroom conviction of Jose Antonio Ibarra — the Venezuelan illegal immigrant who murdered Georgia nursing student Laken Riley in February — in place of the story’s original headline, which one social media user denounced as “absolutely sickening.”
MSNBC’s updated headline read: “The Guilt of Laken Riley’s Killer Was Never In Doubt.” No reasonable person could object to that statement.
Alas, MSNBC first ran the story under the following tone-deaf headline: “Laken Riley’s Killer Never Stood a Chance.”
On the social media platform X, supporters of President-elect Donald Trump reacted to that original headline with outrage. Trump, of course, has pledged to close the open border facilitated by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“You literally can’t make up this level of depravity. These people are sick,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, referring to the establishment shills at MSNBC.
You literally can’t make up this level of depravity. These people are sick. The guy is a murderer. He’s an illegal alien that killed an innocent young woman but MSNBC would rather go to bat for him.
However, much you hate MSNBC it’s not enough! pic.twitter.com/3YSVmbbVBD— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 22, 2024
Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk expressed similar sentiments.
“Dear MSNBC, Laken Riley never stood a chance, you despicable humans,” Kirk tweeted.
Dear MSNBC, Laken Riley never stood a chance, you despicable humans. pic.twitter.com/oGlThTfdoA
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) November 22, 2024
Other X users called the headline “absolutely disgusting,” “evil,” and accused MSNBC of “trying to stealth-edit their inhumanity.”
Look at how @MSNBC framed the conviction and sentencing of Laken Riley’s killer.
Jose Ibarra never stood a chance?
No. Laken Riley never stood a chance against this monster.
Absolutely sickening. pic.twitter.com/KAjlfNMgM3
— Adam Johnston (@ConquestTheory) November 22, 2024
Is there any low @MSNBC won’t sink to? Evil. https://t.co/gU7cOxMIH8
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) November 22, 2024
MSNBC trying to stealth-edit their inhumanity.
Enemy of the people @MSNBC pic.twitter.com/JO65trnFlP
— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) November 22, 2024
Oddly enough, the actual story probably would strike most readers as unobjectionable.
MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos explained that defense attorneys likely chose a judge-only bench trial instead of a jury trial because they knew they had a “hopeless case” and therefore tried to secure the most favorable sentence possible from a judge who might appreciate that they decided to forego a more expensive and time-consuming jury trial and thereby spare Riley’s family unnecessary additional trauma.
In short, the story amounted to garden-variety legal analysis from a defense attorney’s perspective.
And that, in many ways, made the original headline all the more damning.
After all, whether consciously or otherwise, whoever wrote that headline conveyed in essence MSNBC’s editorial position on illegal immigration.
In other words, the headline’s author could not conceal the fact that establishment shills at outlets such as MSNBC, which operate as propaganda arms of the Democratic Party, seem to have more genuine feeling and concern for illegal immigrants — those they euphemistically call “undocumented” — than for American citizens, including those victimized by violent criminals like Ibarra.
