Thread by @jasonrantz

Here's a good example of bias from @NeilMacFarquhar in the NYT on the historic homicide spike: "The significant rise in homicides has roughly coincided with the 18 months of the Covid-19 pandemic."

No mention of the defund police movement, which also coincided with the surge.

He doesn't want you thinking Dems or BLM have anything to do with it.

Instead: "There is no simple explanation for the steep rise. A number of key factors are driving the violence, including the economic & social toll taken by the pandemic & a sharp increase in gun purchases."

But Neil will use *someone else* to bring up unnamed "social justice protests" as maybe having played a role.

He does, however, personally tie the spike to COVID and guns. Lost your job during COVID? Well, you apparently murdered people. Gangs? No direct mention either.

"The data also shows that the gun violence driving much of the surge is concentrated among a relatively small number of people within communities where retaliatory shootings are more common."

Does he mean gang-infested communities? Dunno. He won't say.

On policing? "The pandemic also meant that police departments sometimes struggled with the # of officers under quarantine, while the pandemic curbed public services like mental health counseling and simultaneously aggravated related problems like homelessness."

He buries the deeper convo but refuses to mention the defund movement or BLM by name. But he dismisses those concerns -- when it came to COVID being a factor, he presents zero evidence but he personally believes it so it gets the ink.

Here's the full piece. I have no clue who Neil is, but this is agenda-driven analysis, not a news story: nytimes.com/2021/09/27/us/…