Having spent the past month surveying the wreckage across the US, I can only conclude that journalists have intentionally obfuscated the after-effects of these historic riots because they are fearful of "helping Trump" -- a profane act of media malpractice
unherd.com/2020/07/the-ug…
unherd.com/2020/07/the-ug…
In addition, journalists have overtly declared their deep personal investment in this “movement.” Reporting on things which may be perceived to undermine its moral legitimacy would be intolerable. Imagine the staff revolts. And so, they simply ignore this historic destruction
2016 was an epistemological earthquake which largely destroyed the capacity of the US media to accurately portray current events (see also Russiagate). Their entire framework for narrative-construction radically changed. "Riots are good" was NOT previously a mainstream view
This sentence actually appeared in the New Republic... yesterday. A characterization of the riots as "heroic." This characterization is only possible due to the stunning lack of ACCURATE INFORMATION about the riots. It was "heroic" for white leftists to fire-bomb Somali grocers?? 
Imagine declaring riots "heroic" in the same breath as you bemoan the state's failure to contain the pandemic. They will never admit that these unlawful mass gatherings (the largest EVER by some estimates) drastically undermined society's collective ability to control the virus
The national media's politicized, intentionally-obfuscatory attitude toward these riots/protests has greatly worsened distrust of journalists, hence why so many people don't believe COVID reporting -- leading to nihilistic non-compliance with simple health measures (masks, etc.)
If mass protests couldn't possibly have had any effect on the current COVID surge, as we are constantly told, let's test the thesis. Leftists should organize massive protests today in Houston, Phoenix, and Miami. Then we contact-trace them. Why not? It's totally harmless, right?
The basic point: it's journalistic malpractice on a grand scale for the public to still have such an incomplete/distorted picture of what this still-ongoing "movement" actually produced. As someone whose view of the media was already at rock-bottom, it somehow always gets worse
In closing (for now) it's because of the independent funding that I receive from readers/viewers like you that I am able to publish work like this. And there's more on the way, soon! I want to keep doing it. This model makes it possible
