As deadly wildfires raged across Southern California this week, conservative and liberal media outlets reported similarly on the level of devastation that occurred. But they found vastly different culprits for it.
Right-wing outlets blamed much of the devastation on Democrats. They assailed the political leadership of California, which is heavily Democratic. They also blamed the destruction on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives undertaken in Los Angeles.
Liberal outlets criticized President-elect Donald J. Trump’s reaction to the fires, which they described as insensitive. Some attributed the intensity of the fires to climate change.
The fires have so far killed at least five people, although the sheriff has said the exact toll is unknown as this point, burned 27,000 acres of land and forced the mandatory evacuation of nearly 180,000 people in Los Angeles.
Here’s how a few outlets have been covering the news:
FROM THE RIGHT
Breitbart
Conservative outlets have blamed the fires on the incompetence of elected Democrats in California, including Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles. When the fires broke out, Ms. Bass was visiting Ghana as part of a delegation for the inauguration of the country’s new president, a fact that has angered some of her constituents.
Breitbart, the conservative website, ran more than a half-dozen headlines on its homepage that criticized Ms. Bass on Thursday, including one that referred to her as missing in action “in Africa while her city burned.” Another claimed she “knew of the fire risk” before leaving for Ghana.
“What does the mayor of Los Angeles have to do with Ghana?” said Alex Marlow, the editor in chief of Breitbart, on the “Alex Marlow Show” on Wednesday. Mr. Marlow also claimed that the L.A. Fire Department had emphasized hiring diverse candidates instead of being prepared for fires.
In a news conference Thursday, Ms. Bass dismissed a question about her leadership, saying that she was currently focused only on saving lives.
FROM THE RIGHT
The Daily Wire
Ryan Saavedra, a reporter for The Daily Wire, a conservative news and opinion site, wrote about warnings in December from Kristin Crowley, the city’s fire chief, that budget cuts to the department had “severely limited” its ability to quell wildfires.
Los Angeles officials have said that they didn’t have enough firefighters to contain the fires. Matt Walsh, a conservative blogger who hosts “The Matt Walsh Show” on the site, blamed the staffing issues on efforts at the department to improve diversity, equity and inclusion, often referred to by the acronym D.E.I. Several right-wing influencers had highlighted old fire department documents that signaled an interest in increasing diversity among firefighters and staff, and blamed the struggle to contain the fires on the programs.
“DEI is a cancer that destroys everything it touches,” he wrote in a post on X.
FROM THE LEFT
MSNBC
MSNBC, a liberal news network, has covered the fires on the ground in Los Angeles, providing live updates from its reporters.
“Those embers during those hurricane-force winds were pretty much playing hopscotch to vehicles and homes,” said Dana Griffin, a correspondent for NBC News, on “Morning Joe” on Thursday as she walked through a destroyed neighborhood.
Other parts of the network criticized Mr. Trump for his angry response to the fires. He had blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom of California for the devastation, calling him “incompetent” and questioning some of his past policies involving water and fish.
It “seems like an impossibility” to ask Mr. Trump to lead on “the climate problem we face, as a country, as a globe,” said Alex Wagner, the host of “Alex Wagner Tonight” on MSNBC, reacting to Mr. Trump’s comments.
Ryan Teague Beckwith, a newsletter editor at MSNBC, called Mr. Trump’s response “a profound misunderstanding of his own argument,” in an opinion article published Thursday. The cause of the fires was not the supply of water or a fish, Mr. Teague Beckwith argued, but “a combination of a drought, extremely high winds” and urban planning decisions.
Mr. Trump’s “first instinct was to blame his political opponents, raise an irrelevant issue and misinform everyone about the basic facts,” he wrote.
Writing for Salon, a liberal online news and commentary site, Daria Solovieva, the site’s money editor, wrote that wildfires showed Americans are “not prepared for climate change.”
Ms. Solovieva, who is based in Los Angeles, also said that it was “surreal to watch” how a wealthy region like Los Angeles struggled to find enough firefighters to contain the blazes, but noted that this was “the new normal.”
“Scientists have been predicting these deadly conditions for decades,” Ms. Solovieva wrote. “We are all just one weather calamity away from becoming displaced,” she added.
