The Mainstream Media love to report on hate crimes. This is nothing new although its gone into high gear since the election of President Trump and the certainty that he is using dog signals to his supporters encouraging hate crimes. But a lot of events reported as hate crimes often turn out to be nothing of the sort.
One example is from the 1990s when the media reported on a string of black churches being burned. The FBI did extensive investigation and discovered that there was nothing to this. It turned out that since there are tens of thousands of churches in the country, several have fires every year. Many churches have electrical problems and their steeples make them susceptible to lightening strikes. These accounted for most of the church fires. The few remaining ones were set by disgruntled members of the parish or by someone to disguise a robbery. None of the fires could be attributed to hate crimes.
So, how to tell if a reported story is a hate crime or not? There are some red flags to make people skeptical.
First, how deeply was the story investigated? Hoaxes and false reports are normally rushed to print before any formal investigation. A recent example is the Covington Catholic High School kids taunting a Native American elder. No one bothered contacting the school to hear the kids' side of it nor did anyone ask for a copy of the full video. They went with a short, edited clip with narration rather than sound. Independent investigators watched dozens of hours of video and interviewed hundreds of people before deciding that it was a hoax.
Listen to the details the presumed victim gives. If they can't describe their attacker beyond race or if major details change then these are red flags that we are getting an incomplete or inaccurate story. Nathan Phillips, the so-called Native American elder, changed his story constantly. First he claimed that he was leading a protest and the kids walked up to him and surrounded him, blocking his way. Then he claimed that he was breaking up a potential fight between the kids and a separate group. Jussie Smollett claimed that he couldn't even tell the race of his attackers and his story changed several times.
Right now the biggest red flag that a story is a hoax is if the attacker proclaims that he is motivated by President Trump or is wearing a MAGA cap. There have been dozens of reported incidents Since Trump was elected and most of the ones that have been solved turned out to be hoaxes. The "victims" have admitted that they want to be part of the resistance by polarizing opinion against the president. The hoax attacks always get much more publicity than the follow-up. One local incident made the front page of the local section of the paper shortly after the 2016 election when a college student said that she was attacked by MAGA-cap wearing men who said that Trump's election meant that it was OK to assault women. The eventual follow-up was at the bottom of page 6 and only said that a student admitted to filing a false report. You had to look up her name to see what that false report had been.
There is also a tendency to leap to conclusions when an actual hate crime occurs. Reported incidents of antisemitism are way up and the mainstream media usually cites Trump's election as the cause. But antisemitism is climbing among the left and incidents of antisemitism are highest on college campuses that have strong support for the anti-Israel BDS movement. Unless perpetrators are caught, it's just as likely that antisemitism hate crimes are coming from the left as from the right. But, because most members of the media support the left and think of themselves as decent people, the leap to the conclusion that all antisemitism comes from the right.
This rush to judgement is a general problem. The left-leaning media wants reasons to discredit the president so, when a too-good-to-check story comes along, they report first and either issues retractions or ignore things when the true story gets out.
No comments:
Post a Comment