Thread by @equalityAlec

THREAD. Today, the New York Times published one of its most dishonest, biased, and dangerous pro-police articles that I have ever read. What's happening at the NYT is important, so I try my best to explain below why it’s so harmful.

The article’s thesis is that a (supposedly) recent pro-police turn by (centrist) Democrats is the result of the party organically responding to the needs of “communities of color.” nytimes.com/2022/06/03/us/…

According to the article, Democratic support of the profitable carceral bureaucracies that benefit people who own things and destroy poor communities of color is actually just party elites trying to help the most vulnerable people in our society!

As always, when you see articles like this, ask yourself: Why is this news? How did it get to the reporter and who pitched it? What is the goal of the article? How did they choose which voices to quote and which to ignore? Who benefits?

As always, let’s start by looking at the sources quoted by the New York Times in chronological order:

-person worried about crime at a centrist political rally
-centrist Dem candidate
-pro-police mayor
-centrist Dem candidate #2
-centrist Dem candidate #3
-centrist Dem candidate #4
-two centrist suburban voters (1 former Republican) at same centrist rally
-#3 again
-#2 again

NYT does not have a single person who tells reader an alternative viewpoint. All the “ordinary” people were taken from a political rally for a pro-police, centrist. None of the many candidates, organizers, voters, and survivors who work every day on non-police community safety.

Next, let’s look at how editors chose to market the piece to the far larger number of people who will never actually read the article with the headline and sub-header:

These headlines are a major factual assertion: it was “rising fears of violence” that “have led” elements in the Democratic Party to “change course.” Note that the NYT treats this factual assertion as so obvious that it does not even bother to offer any evidence for it.

The unquestioned premises of the piece are: 1) public sentiment caused (vague, supposed) policy shifts by Democrats; and 2) the causal connection is one of Democratic elites being accountable to a base of ordinary people, not PR campaign to stoke fear that pushes the other way.

In fact, NYT’s claim is actually bolder: it was the Democrats' laudable sensitivity to the concerns of “communities of color” that motivated supposed pro-police shifts.

Note right away that the New York Times erases other possible explanations from the public record: Democratic Party elites in major cities want to boost police because of real estate developers, because police unions have a lot of power and donated to these campaigns...

...because expanding the massive punishment bureaucracy actually serves the interests of people who own things, police surveillance and repression are profitable to certain powerful political interests, etc.

Or, perhaps there actually hasn’t been a major policy shift by centrist Democrats, but NYT is manufacturing one by only profiling centrist, pro-police candidates and by portraying establishment Democrats as having had anti-police policies that they never truly had.

Or, perhaps the Democratic elite is choosing candidates of color who are pro police precisely because that is a good way to inoculate from liberal criticism and to promote its pro-business, pro-police agenda? etc… All of these possibilities are ignored by the paper of record.

Instead of exploring the evidence that corporate, establishment Democrats have other reasons than caring about “communities of color” to boost police and ignore root causes of violence and harm, NYT bases its article on this fraud: this is driven by “largely people of color”

By allowing politicians to lie about their true motivations and printing the lies as fact, the New York Times continues its long tradition of allowing powerful people to manipulate the public into not understanding the true drivers of political actions and policies.

I’ve shown before that this is a common forms of copaganda in New York Times: stating the asserted motivations of powerful people as their actual motivations. According to the NYT, these politicians are just “listening” to the most vulnerable people.

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1513962891187212299

As usualy, @adamjohnsonNYC has written a fantastic summary of why the New York Times’ use of “communities of color” to justify mass incarceration policies is one of the oldest elite liberal tricks in the book. thecolumn.substack.com/p/nyts-black-v…

But notice three additional things: 1) how naive NYT portrayal of politics is. Does anyone actually think that Democratic Party elites making these supposed shifts actually base their positions on what working class “communities of color” want?

2) NYT refers to “alarming” crime increase as if fact and not a suspect claim. By focusing not on facts but on the “perception” that crime is high/rising, it shows ignorance of the role of media in stoking public fear at a time of near historic crime lows.

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1495107576849178626

It’s as if the public’s fears are entirely independent of the media deluge of crime stories. The manufactured “crime wave” but lack of urgent daily attention to existential threats like ecological collapse and rising fascism is a threat to our survival.

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1529154066747645952

3) What exactly is the major policy shift on which the entire article is based? Can the NYT even articulate what is so different about the positions of centrist Democrats now, 6 months ago, 12 months ago, 3 years ago? It can’t, because there hasn’t been one.

Another common media tactic is declaring as significant changes only the most modest rhetorical framing. Doing this hides that the consequential architectures of state bureaucracy, budgetary allocations, and political/economic policy are unchanged.

The reality is that police budgets are at record highs and the United States remains by far the world leader in incarceration, and Democrats, as always, have been leading promoters of both.

Consider the picture of reality offered by the New York Times: the media and the powerful have no role manipulating opinion. Policy positions of elites organically spread from the hearts and minds of the most vulnerable people.

Then, elites magically adapt to will of the most vulnerable people. Even though science/history shows a policy doesn’t reduce violence, elites do it anyway, not b/c it produces profit and ensures their power, but b/c powerless people demand it. See NYT readers, we have Democracy!

B/c problem of violence is never solved since elites use articles like this to ignore root causes in inequality in favor of more cops/cages, the cycle repeats itself each year, with new articles by new elite reporters using the same tactics for decades. sociologytwynham.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/polici…

Let me state this as clearly as possible. The entire unstated premise of the article—that concerns about safety by vulnerable people lead naturally to more police—is false.

In fact, given the overwhelming state of the empirical evidence, NYT suggesting that police play some significant role in preventing crime waves is like climate science denial. civilrightscorps.org/wp-content/upl…

And “communities of color” understand that—it’s why they have been calling for housing, investment in schools, less inequality, access to medical care, better paying jobs, housing, etc. You know, the actual root causes.

Elite Democrats and the New York Times always ignore: if police, prosecution, and prison made us safe, the U.S. would have the safest society in world history.

The only way to write an article like this is to exclude the preference of “communities of color” for non-carceral investments in health, housing, schools, jobs, etc… If the needs and wants of these communities were drivers of Democratic agendas we'd see a different party.

Instead, comfortable white reporters help launder a fundamentally corrupt political system by pretending that it serves the needs of the vulnerable.

Perhaps most importantly, it’s worth noting that, because the reporter didn’t talk to anyone with alternate views, NYT butchers the other side of the story. In a single sentence, the article portrays the views of “left leaning Democrats” but caricatures them.

Says the left sees police departments as “irreparably biased.” This is a very important sleight of hand: the NYT portrays “left-leaning” people as not caring about safety. As if we must pit safety from violence against bias. This is both absurd and dangerous.

The people I work with every day like crime survivors, families of victims, and scientific researchers who study safety don’t oppose more cops only b/c it discriminates. We oppose investments in more police and prisons because it doesn’t make anyone safe.

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1476221720621166601

Experts know that investments in the root causes of harm are what communities need. Only by ignoring this scientific consensus can Democratic elites consistently ignore the calls for more equality, housing, health care, and education in favor more and more guns, cages, and cops.

Finally, something must be said about how the piece continues the NYT’s campaign against “progressive prosecutors.” The NYT goes after the progressive DA in Baltimore (who is a Black woman). The NYT’s portrayal of Mosby is incredible.

First NYT says she has been criticized for “sending a permissive signal to criminals” and for her “record of responding to violent crime.” But only actions the article mentions is that “she would no longer prosecute certain misdemeanors like drug possession and trespassing.”

NYT never tells readers that Mosby has been prosecuting violent crime just like other prosecutors and that the available scientific evidence actually shows that her policy of not prosecuting a few low-level non-violent crimes actually reduces future crime. nber.org/system/files/w…

Instead, the paper just reports what “critics” of hers say, without explaining that the critics are either lying or wrong on each criticism. The actual evidence shows these exact policies make these communities safer.

NYT then falsely portrays situation in San Francisco just days before a partisan recall vote for DA. NYT allows corporate-backed SF Mayor with history of lying to say her crackdown was to “counter rampant street crimes” and not to criminalize homelessness and help real estate.

The reporter doesn’t note that crime is down in San Francisco and in Tenderloin since before the pandemic.

https://twitter.com/petercalloway/status/1510032517876764674

Then, the NYT says that the progressive DA’s “policies have taken much of the blame for what critics say is San Francisco’s passive response to rising crime.”

This sentence belongs in journalism hall of fame. It constructs a vague, false notion (crime is up) by not asserting fact but saying that “critics” are “saying” it. Having constructed false premise, it then passively declares that DA’s policies “have taken the blame.” What? Who?

This is like saying that oil production doesn’t impact climate change but “some critics” are blaming Greenpeace for worldwide anxiety about gas prices without noting that the unnamed critics are PR reps for Exxon.

Then, in a gratuitous, partisan shot, NYT reporter included a science-denying parenthetical joke from a centrist Democratic machine politician about the DA being soft on “nonviolent” crime and then tweeted his article with a quote tweet of this joke.

Actions like this by the reporter to ridicule the progressive DA with false insinuations about a wildly successful safety policy, just days before the recall vote, say a great deal about his bias.

NYT allowing its reporter to do this also says a lot about how the NYT permits a select group of its white male employees who have star appeal (this reporter launched to liberal fame in the Trump era with an anti-Trump book and appearances on CNN) to couch political work as news.

None of this should be that surprising from a reporter who was embarrassingly caught recently retweeting a plea by a New York resident to stop focusing on the actual “crime stats” and to focus more on vibes.

A final note: this NYT article is similar to common corporate PR playbook. Here it a story about how it is used by Amazon. The company was caught in internal emails strategizing how to portray progressive changes as harmful to “Communities of Color.”

https://mobile.twitter.com/birnbaum_e/status/1532808973937688577

Amazon and this NYT reporter both understand something: an important way of justifying brutal and unequal policies is to tell liberals that “communities of color” want them.

If you like this but are a reasonable person who does not want to read a thread this long, please subscribe to my newsletter, which I launched yesterday. You can read this piece in a much better format here: equalityalec.substack.com/p/new-york-tim…

Here is a photo of my colleague, for anyone brave enough to make it this far. He’s getting som gray hair and only has one tooth, but he hates copaganda.