This one is a little different than usual, but I wanted to break down the news cycle around the police shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant.
It might be the worst I’ve ever seen.
A number of outlets rushed to break the news - about a 16 year old girl who was killed by Columbus Police - before we had any details, tying it to the George Floyd verdict.
Other places raced to get the story out without context, including @BBCWorld, @Newsweek, @Reuters and @thedailybeast, who broke the original story that relied on the account of a relative who proved unreliable.
Then, later that night, the body cam footage of the officer came out. It clearly shows the officer shooting Bryant just as she is about to stab another child.
Stills are below.
At the risk of being uncharitable, it is inconceivable to me that, anything but what the officer did would have resulted in serious harm to or the death of the other girl.
But this point was entirely lost among the reporting and the conversation more broadly.
@NPR’s storytelling here is a classic case of how outlets can set narratives that are too stubborn to yield to updated information.
Look at the number of retweets for the supposed story vs. the updated, more accurate version post-body cam.
Almost a 20x drop-off.
And others included that there was body cam footage but deliberately elide what the video actually shows: a police officer protection a girl who otherwise could well have been killed.
I don’t know how you can watch the video and have these be the details that stand out to you if what you’re concerned about is whether or not the officer did the right thing.
A 13 year old was stabbed to death by another teen down the street in Cincinnati on Monday. google.com/amp/s/www.fox1…
And it wasn’t just activists. You had a sitting senator, @SenSherrodBrown, run with this narrative. And @CoriBush in the House.
These are our legislators! Pushing a false story made to look needlessly divisive.
Some people - like Floyd family attorney @AttorneyCrump - just lied about whether or not she was armed.
It’s one thing when activists lie in furtherance of their goals. But when the media is deliberately misleading their audience for the sake of a narrative, it’s an enormous, malignant problem.
@thedailybeast, what’s the goal of this type of reporting? What benefit does the public have from this?
It calls to mind the @KingJames post, which I can’t imagine reading as anything but targeted harassment.
I won’t share the full thing, but when you say “you’re next” and share the image of a police officer in the public crosshairs, how can it be read as anything but a threat?
We’ve got to remember that Ma’Khia Bryant is clearly a victim in all this. Numerous people and systems failed her in her short life to get to this point. That is enormously, irreparably sad.
This thread, about the odds facing kids like Bryant in the foster care system, is depressingly illuminating.
But suggesting that the problem here is the police is bad faith, as is pretending like any police use of force is illegitimate. This type of push is a recipe for civic disaster (and a world where police forces nationwide see their numbers dwindle dangerously low).
And this isn’t to overlook that we have serious, systemic problems with policing in this country. Many of them intersect with issues of race.
But we aren’t going to get anywhere on any of them by shutting our eyes to the facts of what happened, as @ProfessorCrunk is doing.
We’ve got to tell the truth. Lying to fit the narrative may earn clicks, but it won’t change hearts and minds. And it won’t address the tragedies that led to the death of Ma’Khia Bryant.
And the American people deserve better than to have falsehoods foisted on them by the media.
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If you missed Trump’s address to Congress last night, I wouldn’t rely on media stories to explain it.
Rather than report on a speech viewers found “inspiring,” the corporate press played PR for Democrats.
Wanna know why trust in the press is underwater? Look. ⤵️
A @CBSNews poll of viewers found “A large majority of viewers approve” of Trump’s message, overwhelmingly describing it as “inspiring,” rather than “divisive.”
The speech was certainly partisan - and viewers skewed right.
But the press’s own view appears to slant their takes.
What leads me to claim that? Well, just look at how @CBSNews decided to report on the speech.
They tweeted out that “there was a horribly tense feeling,” and it was “filled with drama.”
Why focus on how their reporter felt, rather than viewers?
Having worked on the Hill I get the ubiquity of Politico Pro and its cost.
But I think it takes an enormous suspension of disbelief to call it a conspiracy theory to look askance at the millions of dollars the Biden admin paid the paper that ran this hatchet job on his opponent.
Which, to be clear, is exactly what outlets like @CNN are doing.
@CNN This from @axios seems particularly unreasonable.
It isn’t a “fake theory” to say that Politico is “funded by the government.” It is, to the tune of $8 million. That isn’t in dispute.
Quick 🧵 revisiting corporate media claims on the Covid lab leak theory then (a “conspiracy theory,” “misinformation,” etc.) vs. now (“okay the CIA even admits it”).
Trump’s return to the Oval Office has me reflecting on some of the worst “journalism” during his first term.
Of that long list, one in particular jumps out: the corporate press hype around the Steele dossier.
Do you *really* remember how bad it was? Follow along. ⤵️
Before I dive in, would really encourage you to read my full piece at @Holden_Court, because there’s too much to fit in a thread.
That said, surely you remember the dossier, a bunch of dramatic claims about Trump that even @nytimes now calls “discredited” open.substack.com/pub/drewholden…
But before that, there was the hype: the hero worship of Christopher Steele, the spy who was going to save American from Trump, the Russian puppet.
I mean, @washingtonpost put “hero” right in the title.
The rest of the piece is worse. WaPo repeats the claims — that the Russians had kompromat on him for engaging with prostitutes! Maybe Trump was compromised — verbatim without mentioning in the first instance that there’s no evidence these claims are true! Look at the highlights.
An unthinkable breach of journalistic ethics. There was plenty more.