According to NewsBuster Brent Baker, network news anchors and reporters who reported last night on the threats against Congressmen who supported health care reform were “legitimizing Democratic talking points meant to discredit critics of the just-passed health care bill”:

Sounding more like MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann than impartial newscasts, ABC, CBS and NBC all led Wednesday night by legitimizing Democratic talking points meant to discredit critics of the just-passed health care bill. “Opposition to health care turns menacing,” ABC's Diane Sawyer warned. CBS teased with audio clips -- “Baby-murdering scumbag,”“You are a dirtbag” and “I hope you die” -- as fill-in anchor Maggie Rodriguez cited “threats of violence against Democrats who voted for health care reform, even as public support for the plan is growing.”

Baker's argument is that Democrats are engaged in a “demonization effort” against opponents of the new law, and that the media, in reporting on the threatened violence, are playing into that effort. Notably, for all his denunciations of the Democrats and the press over this alleged “demonization,” Baker couldn't find any space to denounce the people actually doing the threatening.

But perhaps he deserves at least some credit for resisting the temptation to blame the Democrats themselves for the threats, a theory his colleagues in the conservative blogosphere have eagerly promulgated.