Thread by @equalityAlec

Thread. The copaganda crisis is now causing a scandal at the Associated Press. This @ap article on Portland police is one of the single worst examples of media reporting on police I've ever seen. I explain below why it's so dangerous. abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/l…

The thesis of the article is that police are powerless to stop Portland from becoming "lawless" because of a relatively toothless law that restricts use of rubber bullets and chemical irritants. (The history of police violence and criminality that led to it are not mentioned.)

1st, note that the article is basically a police union press release. It takes a pet issue of the union and local real estate developers and is full of false claims (repeated without skepticism).

2nd, here are the sources in the @AP article, in order:

1) Portland Police Bureau
2) Police Lieutenant
3) Angry pro-police resident (happens to be same individual quoted in separate Fox News Business story. Hm..)
4) Politician
5) Police Sergeant
6) "Police say"
7) "Authorities"

3rd, the law at issue here does almost nothing. It doesn't stop police from arresting people for crimes, doesn't hold them accountable or reduce their budget, and doesn't even stop them from using military or chemical weapons! This is about wielding right-wing power symbolically.

4th, the @AP chose not to explain how the law works, why it doesn't do much, or why the police claims about it were false. It doesn't mention the link between these false claims and political campaigns by the police union, local developers, and business interests.

5th, the article does not explain why people are protesting, the tens of thousands of federal felony crimes committed by Portland Police that led to this incredibly minor and basically useless law that asks police to please not use such weapons (but still lets them.) No context.

6th, not mentioned in this article? More than 50% of all Portland police arrests are of unhoused people, and the majority for minor offenses connected to surviving.

7th, when media uses words like "lawless," notice that they are never talking about the $50 billion in wage theft from low wage workers that cops don't investigate or the several million physical assaults by police that cops don't include in "crime stats."

8th, @ap choosing to lead with "lawless" is a choice to generate clicks by conveying that Portland is on the very of chaos like in The Purge. It's not like that at all. Everything is as always there: the crimes of the rich are ignored (lawless), and the poor are ruthlessly caged.

9th, we already live in the society with the highest rate of human caging in modern history, and the most heavily militarized, unaccountable police forces in the modern world. These bureaucracies target almost exclusively the poor and most vulnerable people.

Headlines and articles of the kind we are seeing across the U.S. are designed to create a Willie Horton style panic. Amidst that fear, police states thrive. Stories like this make everyone afraid of poor people, people protesting injustice, immigrants, people of color.

I've described at length who police target, why, and how this has nothing to do with the "rule of law" or safety. I hope the @AP will cover some of this:

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1422949466986921991

This is a growing and disturbing pattern of baseless right-wing police propaganda being repeated, validated and disseminated widely to tens of millions of people without any hint of skepticism by mainstream corporate media:

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1449760725250023431

One of the most disturbing elements of this dangerous story is that it involves the non-profit @Report4America. That organization should immediately address this issue, and begin a process of implementing trainings and protocols to ensure that it dosn't happen again.

The @AP and the reporter @SaraLCline and the relevant editors should also immediately review all internal processes that could have led to an article like this making it to publication. I would be happy to discuss these criticisms in more detail if interested.

I take it back. The story that @ap and @Report4America let same reporter publish *yesterday* is worse. It has every unethical tactic I’ve analyzed in my threads for 6 months. The way it connects cops to homicides is scientific equivalent of climate denial. apnews.com/article/portla…

As @ZakirSpeaks notes, the @Report4America reporter failed to note something pretty crucial to the story: that cops actually supported this munitions law (because it doesn't actually do anything significant).

https://twitter.com/ZakirSpeaks/status/1435665022538027014

And, as @ZakirSpeaks also notes, the same @Report4America reporter's article yesterday suggesting a connection between (fabricated) police lack of resources and homicides didn't contain a single contrary source, like, you know "science" or "experts" or civil right leaders.