Thread by @equalityAlec

THREAD. What’s happening at the New York Times is disturbing. Many people pointed out the headline about a mysterious bullet that killed a 14-year-old girl, but some interesting things emerge when you look closely at the article itself. nytimes.com/2021/12/30/us/…

The background: An LAPD cop killed two people with an assault rifle in a Burlington Coat Factory, including a 14-year-old girl who was trying on a dress, part of a wave of recent police murders in Los Angeles.

https://twitter.com/PplsCityCouncil/status/1474510040161656832

Here are the sources NYT chose to educate readers, in order:

-Spokesperson for cop union
-Lawyer for cop (humanizing, defending him)
-Person mentored by the cop
-New person mentored by the cop
-AG
-Professor (former cop)
-Lawyer for family
-Lawyer for cop (again, twice more)

The New York Times gives the first two and last two positions – the most important in the article—to the police union and to the lawyer for the killer cop, giving them an opportunity to spin the narrative.

This privileging of cop misinfo by NYT is particularly shocking because the very last line of the article--defending the cop for following training and procedures when he killed the girl--is false, although the paper doesn’t fact check it or tell readers that experts disagree.

Then things get weird. NYT trots out an expert. Expert is a Bowling Green State professor who we are told “studies police violence.” His opinion is sympathetic to cop, laying the groundwork for narrative about how hard the case is to prove b/c cop was in a chaotic situation.

What doesn’t NYT say? First: the professor is a former cop! This is part of a pattern I’ve noted in the NYT to launder pro-cop viewpoints through neutral “professors” without telling readers.

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1464647248139141123

Second, note that the New York Times specifically chose this "expert" to float talking point that convicting this cop would be hard in this case. It offered no contrary expert, even though many exist.

This is how police union spin is made through huge, expensive PR departments that taxpayers fund. The New York Times doesn't tell readers about massive police marketing budgets in Los Angeles used after police shootings!

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1470790952558243848

But it gets much worse. The article is a sympathetic profile of a “good guy” cop who loves children and the community. And the story is told as an isolated random tragedy that happened to a good guy--not part of a historical and recent alarming orgy of police violence in LA.

NYT chose to print this article without a single source who has a critical take on systemic police violence. It is entirely devoid of anyone making systemic critiques about police violence or connecting this to deeper structural issues about our society’s investments.

The NYT does what a lot of prominent media does: it finds examples of “good cops” doing things like taking presents to kids or playing sports with troubled youth. It’s part of a massive copaganda effort to create the myth of the “good cop.” slate.com/news-and-polit…

Then things get weirder. NYT portrays the cop's twitter profile as caring about racial justice and mentoring kids as the killer cop tries to “confront head-on the issues of racism and policing.” This is a stunning misreading of the killer cop's tweets.

Other journalists who dug into the cop's tweets showed consistent apology for violence. His twitter is deranged, pro-police union nonsense. He repeatedly defends police brutality and uses pro-Trump talking points, including voter suppression and strange fascist mythologies.

I hate to do this, but I think the force of these points just can’t be understood unless you read the NYT piece alongside another better piece by local journalists. This is just something you should see for yourselves: knock-la.com/lapd-officer-w…

And look at how the local journalists more accurately describe the shooting. This is just an example of good journalism (by @cerisecastle @JonnyPeltz) and lazy or biased journalism by the entire team of NYT reporters and editors. It would be fascinating to hear them explain it.

The facts of the video are devastating and reflect an unhinged reaction by the cop, who disobeyed what every other cop on scene instructed. The local article quotes an expert who says the shooting “never should have happened.” NYT reporters chose to simply ignore that.

But what NYT did is even more sinister. Article portrays the cop as a "community policing" focused crusader against racism and police brutality and as a paragon of LAPD's "community policing" efforts, but it gives none of the background on the violence of "community policing."

"Community policing" like this is standard counterinsurgency developed by colonial military to pacify native populations (particularly in Africa and Asia) and have been brought strategically into the U.S. under the marketing banner of “community policing.”

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1383059917460930560

At the end of the day, the article's premise is off: we can't understand police violence by delving into the personal motivations and character of the cop who shoots a little girl or by quoting openly fascist cop union or by giving the cop’s lawyer space to workshop a defense.

If you want to understand LAPD, I recommend this stunning report by local people affected by LAPD violence. It is one of the great contemporary community-based histories and analyses of police violence and who benefits from it. @stoplapdspying automatingbanishment.org/section/4-Cont…

UPDATE: The NYT reporters on the story are @JillCowan @giuliaheyward and @chrisychung. I hope they'll be willing to engage with some of these criticisms, and I hope their unnamed editors will also. I'd love to meet with you to discuss and get your perspective.