Lawrence O’Donnell's piece above that is quite telling. Since the execution of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, many eyewitnesses have been telling a fairly consistent story:
- Brown was in an altercation with Wilson at the window of the police vehicle.
- A shot was fired.
- Brown ran away from Wilson.
- Wilson shot at Brown while he was running away.
- A bullet appeared to hit Brown as he ran away.
- Brown turned around with his hands up, surrendering.
- Wilson pumped several more bullets into Brown as Wilson approached Brown.
Many eyewitness video clips on YouTube and eyewitness interviews similar to the eyewitness in Lawrence O’Donnell’s piece above have basically said the same thing, to several reporters and anchors at CNN as well.
Most of the anchors and reporters at MSNBC have been accurately putting the eyewitness accounts into proper context. Many others, including Jeffrey Toobin, have been hedging. However, with the emergence of two new eyewitnesses, Toobin became giddy on CNN. He is now declaring that the execution of Brown was likely a murder.
Follow below the fold for more.
As Lawrence O’Donnell said, the story of the two new witnesses correlated perfectly with the statements from all previous eyewitnesses. What could possibly be the difference? Sunny Hostin laid it out:
I guess I am just so surprised. From the very beginning of this story everyone was questioning eyewitness accounts of the people in the neighborhood. I don’t really understand why now there is this game changer. Why now you have two white witnesses that are somehow not connected to the community. And now they seem to be the more credible witnesses? It’s really befuddling to me, quite frankly, because now we have six, seven, eight witnesses saying the damn thing.
Over time ,with the release of the irrelevant Brown "shoplifting" video, as well as pointing to typical teenage music and pictures interpreted to malign the victim, many began giving plausibility to the idea that Wilson’s execution of Brown may have been justified.
In early August, 22-year-old John Crawford III went shopping at a Walmart store in Ohio. Crawford had an unpackaged BB gun in the store, one which Walmart sells. No one was bothered by him having the toy. No one, that is, except for 24-year-old Ronald Ritchie.
It turns out that Ritchie called 911 claiming there was a black man walking around with a gun in the store. Ritchie claimed the gun was as AR-15 rifle and that Crawford was pointing it at other shoppers. Based on the information gleaned later from a videotape and eyewitness accounts, Ritchie seems to have lied. Officers shot Crawford almost on sight.
In a country where open carry is the law of the land in many states, including Ohio, why were cops so quick to pull the trigger? It is bias, plain and simple, bias against weaponized black men.
Police bias against black men likely got these two black men, Brown and Crawford, executed for no reason. And media bias could allow the cops to walk free.
The effects of bias—and specifically media bias—is quite dangerous. It should not be viewed as mostly a racial thing. It is much deeper. Media bias enabled the misrepresentation of the Affordable Care Act, for example, leading to implementation setbacks (e.g., Medicaid expansion not implemented in many states), which has caused the death of many.
Media bias against Muslims makes the caricature of an overly powerful ISIS/ISIL an existential danger to Americans. Popular opinion, influenced by a biased media, forced the hand of a president reluctant to go into another war, a war that will get many Americans killed unnecessarily.
Media bias promotes economic theories that are proven false yet fail to inform Americans accurately. Supply-side economics has provably failed. Other inaccuracies abound and need to be laid to rest. Increasing the minimum wage does not increase unemployment. There is no economic reason to treat investment income different than wage income other than to expand wealth and lead to greater income disparity.
Yet there is a media bias against calling out the snake oil salespeople.
If America ever got an unbiased media, sooner rather than later many of America’s social, racial, and economic ills would disappear.