NY Daily News: San Bernardino victim deserved to die for being conservative

NY Daily News: San Bernardino victim deserved to die for being conservative

A bad week for American journalism just got worse. On Thursday, New York’s Daily News ran a full page headline related to the mass killings in San Bernardino that was so callous and inappropriate it would have led to multiple firings at a reputable newspaper.

The next day, the paper doubled down on its yellow journalistic practices only to be matched by hordes of reporters who trespassed on the home of terrorists Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, tainting a federal crime scene.

But the Daily News wasn’t quite done. On Saturday, the paper went all in, publishing a column by veteran reporter Linda Stasi that argued amazingly that one of the San Bernardino shooting victims was just as bad as the killers by virtue of his being outspoken in his criticism of Islamic extremism on Facebook.

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Nicholas Thalasinos was one of 14 people murdered Wednesday by Farook and Malik at Inland Regional Center while attending a holiday party. According to Stasi, arguments between co-workers Thalasinos and Farook over religion mean that Thalasinos shares equal blame for Wednesday’s deaths, even though he murdered nobody.

“They were two hate-filled, bigoted municipal employees interacting in one department,” Stasi wrote. “Now 13 innocent people are dead in unspeakable carnage.”

Stasi’s phrasing is revealing: She refuses to include Thalasinos among the “innocent” vicitms and instead places him among the guilty, alongside Farook and Malik, indicating Wednesday’s shooting was his fault.

“Make no mistake, as disgusting and deservedly dead as the hate-filled fanatical Muslim killers were, Thalasinos was also a hate-filled bigot,” she writes.

And what were Thalasinos’s crimes, according to Stasi? Being an “anti-government, anti-Islam, pro-NRA, rabidly anti-Planned Parenthood kinda guy” who liked Ann Coulter, disliked Iran, and sometimes got in fights on Facebook. That, in Stasi’s mind, made him equivalent to a man who donned a mask and military attire, picked up an assault rifle, and murdered more than a dozen people in cold blood.

Stasi eagerly draws whatever parallels she can between Farook and Thalasinos. Besides each being religious (Thalasinos was a Messianic Jew), she mocks Farook for traveling abroad to meet his wife (and co-shooter) Tashfeen Malik, largely so she can then point out that Thalasinos also met his wife online.

This isn’t the first time Stasi has aggressively lashed out at conservatives. Two months ago, she called for the NRA to be classified as a terrorist organization.

This report, by Blake Neff, was cross-posted by arrangement with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

LU Staff

LU Staff

Promoting and defending liberty, as defined by the nation’s founders, requires both facts and philosophical thought, transcending all elements of our culture, from partisan politics to social issues, the workings of government, and entertainment and off-duty interests. Liberty Unyielding is committed to bringing together voices that will fuel the flame of liberty, with a dialogue that is lively and informative.

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