From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield. Another week, another spasm of violence, this time on a Virginia

baseball field. The third most powerful Republican in the House, the majority whips,

Steve Scalise, and four others shot, injured, and hospitalized.

House Republicans were practicing for a friendly summer showdown with the Democrats, when

America's pastime was suddenly desecrated by America's other pastime.

The latest active shooter, from all indications, was also a politically active shooter.

A left-wing protester enraged at Donald Trump and the GOP, taking a perverted sense of justice into his own hands,

whereupon the police, the media, political leaders, and polemical partisans responded as if by reflex,

with the all-too-familiar combination of confusion, bravery, compassion, prejudgment, accusation, and hysteria.

As we have long observed, chaotic breaking news coverage often obscures the very events

it seeks so breathlessly to illuminate.

When the mayhem springs from politics, truth and context get more elusive still.

And so, regrettably, we are obliged to offer our latest breaking news consumer handbook,

Political Violence Edition.

This could be the first political, rhetorical terrorist act, and that has to stop.

I think it was politically motivated, and I think we'll probably find either a mental

illus component or some kind of psychological.

Strange Facebook postings, almost like something out of Lee Harvey Oswald in a way,

someone that was getting ready to do some type of assassination.

Point one, be cautious of labels. Terrorism, assassination, hate crime, and lunacy are neither

precise terms nor mutually exclusive. Each episode is distinct unto itself, and the impulse to label it is more apt to distort

...