I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I remember those clowns showing up on the news from time to time even before Matthew Shepherd’s funeral, but as @WearySky notes the media landscape was much different back then. Fox News Channel and MSNBC didn’t even exist until 1996 and weren’t available nationwide until years after that, and social media was still in its embryonic stage back in the 90s.
The WBC also spent years refining their media-baiting tactics, which seem tailored specifically to feed the outrage-hungry 24-hour news cycle format that networks now demand. Every time reporters get tired of covering them they just up the ante, thus the protests at the soldiers’ funerals.
