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| Police on the UCLA campus this morning (NBC) |
I used to defend the media against accusations of bias for at least attempting to be objective even if they didn’t always succeed. At least they tried. Or so I thought.
The benefit of the doubt I once gave them has completely disappeared since they began reporting on Israel’s war against Hamas. I am not going to rehash all that, even though it continues to this day. I do however want to discuss the current journalistic travesty they are trying to pass off as objective reporting. This is a description of events that took place this morning at the UCLA campus:
Police removed barricades and began dismantling pro-Palestinian demonstrators’ fortified encampment early Thursday at the University of California, Los Angeles, after hundreds of protesters defied orders to leave, some of them forming human chains as police fired flash-bangs to break up the crowds. Some people were detained, their hands bound with zip ties.
The action came after officers spent hours threatening arrests over loudspeakers if people did not disperse. A crowd of more than 1,000 had gathered on campus, both inside a barricaded tent encampment and outside it, in support. Protesters and police shoved and scuffled as officers encountered resistance. Video showed police pulling off helmets and goggles worn by some protesters as they were being detained.
With police helicopters hovering, the sound of flash-bangs, which produce a bright light and a loud noise to disorient and stun people, pierced the air.
As I watched a live broadcast of that event this morning it was made clear to me who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. The optics made the police look like Nazi Storm Troopers. Those optics were helped along by reporters on the scene describing the heavy handed tactics used by heavily armed police in riot gear imposing their heavy-handed tactics on unarmed students protesting an unjust war.
Nary a word about the police trying to enforce the law. Protester's were breaking the law. After being asked multiple times (first by university officials and then by the police) to stop and disperse, the police were called in.
But reporters o the scene allowed the misleading optics accompanied by their descriptions of police enforcing the law speak for itself. It looked like the police riots of the 68 Democratic convention. So without uttering a word of blame, (and thereby divining the appearance of objectivity) the media succeeded in allowing the opitcs make the police look bad.
This is what happened in every instance where police clashed with protestors ever since these protests began at Columbia. The police are always portrayed as the villains in any interaction with civilians involved in – or suspected of - criminal activity.
It’s true that sometimes police overreact to tragic consequences. But more often than not they are either doing their job protecting the public or are defending themselves against a lethal attack.
The latter of which happened in Chicago a few weeks ago. A black suspect who was pulled over started shooting at the police officer who was approaching him. The officer returned fire along with fellow officers at the scene - each firing multiple times until he was shot dead. Protests are still going on and there is going to be an investigation of those officers who have been placed on paid leave..
An incident of obvious self defencse is now being investigated as a case of police misconduct. No one denies that the suspect fired first. And yet these officers are being investigated for simply defending their lives.
Ever since the George Floyd incident, the police have been in the cross hairs of media scrutiny. Almost always looking at the police as guilty until proven innocent.
(This has hampered law enforcement in untold ways. Surely this has had a negative impact on crime prevention. Chicago seems to have a drive-by shooting every day where an innocent bystander – often a child - gets in the way of a bullet intended for someone else. But I digress.)
It is with this mindset that the media sees any police activity When violence ensues the police are blamed albeit ever so subtly. As they did today on the UCLA campus. Adding to the subte bias is media focus on a faculty member being handuffed and arrested. They are the so-called adults in the room. . That just adds to the Nazilike optics the media chooses to focus on. They don’t say anything. They let the image of a ‘resepcted’ and perhaps even tenured professor being handcuffed and arrested speak for itself. If the arrestee is female - even better.
I am sickened by the insidious way in which the mainstream media has been reporting these protests. They are not journalists. They are left wing advocates in journalist ‘clothing’. Instead of reporting facts without bias they report facts with obvious bias about which they may not even be aware
And they are are overwhelmingly the primary source for all information on anything they wish to report on.
About the student protestors themselves. Are their motives really all that idealistic? Are their anti Israel views really based on idealism?
Let us for a moment grant that they have a point about the tens of thousands of Palestinian casuaties in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military. Let us ignore the fact that thousands of the casulaitues were actually Hamas terrorists that were not identified as such by Hamas.. And let us ignore the fact that the vast majority of Palestinian casualties were orchestrated by Hamas for purposes of generating world sympathy for their cause (which they have succeeded in doing magnificently!).
OK. But where were these socially conscientious protesters after Hamas massacred 1200 Jews on that October 7th day… the worst and most sadistic brutal mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust? Where were the protests against the Hamas brutal rape, sexual mutilation, and murder of Jewish women on that day? Why has there not been a single protest demanding Hamas release the hostages Hamas is still holding captive... and still raping hostage families in some cases? I have not seen a single protest by a single student about any of that.
I guess mass murdering Jews and raping Jewish women doesn’t concern these ‘altruistic’ students so much. Nor has the mainstream media mentioned a word about that ethical lapse. Nope. All the moral outrage is at the colonialist Jews and their imperialist provider - the US.
On a more positive note (if one can truly find anything positive about current realities both here and in the Middle East) there is the following. One might think that the 30,000 Hamas reported ‘innocent’ Palestinian casualties at the hands of Israel’s military would have scuttled any chance about expanding the Trump era Abraham Accords. That would certainly be the conventional thinking. But that is not the case. From JNS:
Saudi Arabia has decided to normalize relations with Israel and is debating the timing of the announcement, a foreign diplomat familiar with the details told Haaretz on Monday.
According to the source cited in the article by the daily’s diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Lis, Riyadh is discussing whether to make the move in the coming weeks or after the U.S. presidential election this November, in which either Democrat Joe Biden will continue to lead the country or his challenger Republican Donald Trump will return to the White House.
Wow! Stranger things may have happened. But not many as counterintuitive as this.
Light at the end if the tunnel? We shall see.