CNN demonstrated this anew on Sunday when its reporting about a gang rape in Italy was focused not on the horror of the crime itself, but on how those all-purpose bogeymen, the “far right,” would capitalize upon it.  

CNN headlined its story this way: “An alleged gang rape shocks Italy, and provides fodder for an ascendant far right.” It was referring to an incident that took place on Jan. 30 in the Sicilian city of Catania. The Italian-language il Giornale reported on Feb. 3 that Catania was “in shock over what happened to a thirteen-year-old girl, raped by a gang of seven Egyptian boys in the municipal gardens of Villa Bellini, one of the two oldest gardens in the Sicilian city.” Three of the Egyptians were minors.

The girl “and her seventeen-year-old boyfriend were approached by the pack near the bathrooms of the municipal garden of Villa Bellini, at that hour almost deserted. At a later time, the foreigners threatened the couple: while the boy was beaten, immobilized and kept away, the thirteen-year-old was raped by two of the suspects while the other five looked on. Panicked and in pain, after the second abuse the young woman found the strength to free herself from her tormentor and escape with her boyfriend.” This appalling has shaken the entire nation of Italy and has become the linchpin for a national discussion about mass Muslim migration into the country.

As far as CNN is concerned, that’s the problem. Its Sunday report asserted that the gang rape “has become not only a symbol of violence against women in the country but a cause célèbre for Italy’s far-right government.” The crime “was soon seized upon as evidence that migrants should be blocked from entering the country.” In Italy, it seems, the right-wing “seizes”; in the U.S., Republicans “pounce.”