When the dust settled after the brutal shooting that took Charlie Kirk’s life on September 10, 2025, one would think the country’s newsrooms would be focused on facts, justice, and mourning. Instead we got a parade of cheap political grandstanding — and this week’s spectacle features former ABC analyst Matthew Dowd complaining on Katie Couric’s podcast that “no one” is talking about his firing by MSNBC. It’s hard to watch without feeling sick: conservatives lost a leader to political violence, and the media’s first instinct was to perform, pivot, and cover their own reputations.
Megyn Kelly didn’t mince words as she ripped into Dowd’s self-centered whine, rightly calling out the narcissism of a pundit who thinks his career is the story when a man was just assassinated. Kelly’s take was unapologetic and exactly the kind of clear-eyed pushback Americans need against the sanctimonious elites who police language but not the consequences of their own rhetoric. If courage on the airwaves still matters, Kelly’s willingness to name hypocrisy and call out partisan double standards is a breath of fresh air.
Let’s be blunt about what happened: Dowd suggested on air that Kirk’s rhetoric “could” have contributed to the violence, then apologized when the backlash hit, and MSNBC swiftly declared his comments “inappropriate” and severed ties. Dowd now says network bosses privately agreed his words were misconstrued but that a decision had already been made. Whether you think his initial remark was ill-timed or not, the bigger story is the lightning-quick payroll justice handed down by a network that cannot tolerate even the hint of controversy when it threatens its brand.
Worse, the media circus immediately veered into selective outrage — up in arms over Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension while treating the firing of an on-air analyst like a workplace memo. That’s the point Dowd made on Couric’s show: his former colleagues were loudly defending one of their own talents and ignoring another. For conservatives who have watched this pattern for years, it’s yet another confirmation that the so-called mainstream press operates less like a truth-seeking institution and more like an ideological clearinghouse that rewards preferred narratives and punishes inconvenient ones.
This isn’t just hypocrisy; it’s the weaponization of culture and commerce against independent thought. When networks fire employees in the dead of night to appease outrage mobs, they teach every commentator to stay inside the approved lines or face public shaming and job loss. That chilling effect doesn’t protect democracy — it corrodes it. Hardworking Americans deserve honest reporting, not performative apologies and a revolving door of firings whenever the social media pressure cooker winds up.
We should demand better from our news outlets: consistency, restraint, and actual journalism, not instant trials by tweet. And we owe it to Charlie Kirk’s memory to insist that his death be treated with the seriousness and fairness any victim deserves, not as raw material for partisan point-scoring. Stand with those who will call out the media’s double standards, and don’t let the elites rewrite the rules of public discourse to silence dissent and protect their favorites.
If you believe in free speech, due process, and a media that covers the country rather than its own reflection, now is the time to speak up. Push back against cancel culture wherever it shows its ugly face, and demand accountability from networks that preach civility while policing opinions with a two-tiered system. America is better than this moral theater, and patriots will not quietly surrender our right to honest debate.
