When Washington fiddled while Baltimore burned[...]
“Officials said 31 adults and four juveniles were arrested, and six police officers were hurt after several storefronts were vandalized and other properties were damaged in the waning hours of the Freddie Gray demonstrations,” WBAL reported.
Shockingly, the violence and property destruction was apparently condoned by the city’s mayor. “It’s a very delicate balancing act,” said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. “Because while we try to make sure that they were protected from the cars and other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.”
It was an episode begging for media coverage. Recall how not merely reporters but flagship cable news anchors descended on Ferguson, Missouri, when anti-law enforcement demonstrations broke out there in August and again in November of last year. Remember how journalists like CNN’s Don Lemon embedded himself within a group of protesters and feigned effrontery when he was pushed back by riot police along with those protesters with whom he had aligned himself. Recount how MSNBC’s Chris Hayes was positioned so close to the violence that he was targeted by rock-throwing demonstrators.
It was not merely Ferguson where reporters fought for a front-row seat to the violence. Following a New York City grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer responsible for the death of Eric Garner, the journalistic establishment didn’t have to go very far to amplify the ensuing demonstrations beyond their reasonable proportion. When demonstrators were inexplicably allowed by that city’s sympathetic mayor to barricade the West Side Highway in protest, the news media was right there beside them.
So, where were the cable networks on Saturday night as Baltimore was rocked by violence? Telling their viewers to go to Twitter if they wanted to read the news.
“This is always about choices, right? I mean you know, you have to make a decision, what are you gonna do with this two hours of time. And we, you know, CNN made its decisions, and is sticking to its plan and so forth,” CNN political correspondent Errol Louis told the network’s viewers remorselessly.
He added that those anxious viewers will “find out all about what happened in the streets of Baltimore by this time tomorrow.” Have some patience, or go “find a live feed somewhere.”
“CNN was covering the WHCD and MSNBC was covering the WHCD and Fox was showing some already-taped crap,” The Washington Free Beacon’s Sonny Bunch noted before observing that those who attended the baseball game at Camden Yards were held in place as the violence escalated outside the stadium. “And it’s a perfect example of why the rest of the country is so sick of Washington, so hateful toward the press corps.”
The press has demonstrated a ravenous hunger for news stories involving young, disaffected, primarily African-American men lashing out violently at the police. They have shown a willingness to devote hours if not whole days to covering similar events. Editors have assigned reporters and flagship talent alike to travel great distances in order to cover those stories. But when one is occurring in the Beltway media’s backyard, they simply ignore it because it conflicts with the night in which they finally get their due.
That editorial instinct, one shared by virtually every media outlet, reflects a toxic level of self-veneration and an ugly disdain for the public this institution supposedly serves.
In the words of the mollycoddled student editors of Oberlin’s college newspaper, Saturday’s coverage of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was the press’s “love letter to ourselves.” The members of an association that had not long ago embraced its corruption and venality would be humiliated by this display of callousness toward real suffering in defense of a customary and cherished privilege. But you aren’t hearing very much embarrassment this morning, are you?
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/04/27/when-washington-fiddled-while-baltimore-burned/
