Andrew Sullivan had a very good piece yesterday, When The Narrative Replaces The News How the media grotesquely distorted the Atlanta massacres. It should be noted that the investigation is a mere two days old and much which we assume will change.
But that is the point. All news is fragmentary and subject to error in the immediate hours after a tragedy. Witnesses are confused. By-standers lie. Misunderstandings are rampant. But that is the point.
There is a difference between errors and propaganda and the mainstream media are practicing propaganda based on an intolerant, racist, divisive theology, critical race theory and social justice theory, and are pretty explicitly not reporting facts or making natural errors. They are seemingly deliberately misleading the reading public.
The bare and undisputed facts are that on Tuesday March 16th, beginning around 5pm, a single gunman murdered four people at an Asian spa. He then drove away and murdered two more individuals at a second Asian Spa and then a further two at a third Asian spa. Six of the eight victims were Asian and two were White. The perpetrator, who was caught and arrested, is a young religious white man. Those are the fact as we know them.
From Sullivan.
The massacres at three massage parlors in the Atlanta area this week, leaving eight human beings dead, others injured, and their families scarred, were horrifying. Read this deeply moving story about the son of one of the women killed to remind yourself of this. It’s brutal. The grief will spread and resonate some more.
But this story has also been deeply instructive about our national discourse and the state of the American mainstream and elite media. This story’s coverage is proof, it seems to me, that American journalists have officially abandoned the habit of attempting any kind of “objectivity” in reporting these stories. We are now in the enlightened social justice world of “moral clarity” and “narrative-shaping.”
Here’s the truth: We don’t yet know why this man did these horrible things. It’s probably complicated, or, as my therapist used to say, “multi-determined.” That’s why we have thorough investigations and trials in America. We only have one solid piece of information as to motive, which is the confession by the mass killer to law enforcement: that he was a religious fundamentalist who was determined to live up to chastity and repeatedly failed, as is often the case. Like the 9/11 bombers or the mass murderer at the Pulse nightclub, he took out his angst on the source of what he saw as his temptation, and committed mass murder. This is evil in the classic fundamentalist sense: a perversion of religion and sexual repression into violence.
We should not take the killer’s confession as definitive, of course. But we can probe it — and indeed, his story is backed up by acquaintances and friends and family. The New York Times originally ran one piece reporting this out. The Washington Post also followed up, with one piece citing contemporaneous evidence of the man’s “religious mania” and sexual compulsion. It appears that the man frequented at least two of the spas he attacked. He chose the spas, his ex roommates said, because he thought they were safer than other ways to get easy sex. Just this morning, the NYT ran a second piece which confirms that the killer had indeed been in rehab for sexual impulses, was a religious fanatic, and his next target was going to be “a business tied to the pornography industry.”
We have yet to find any credible evidence of anti-Asian hatred or bigotry in this man’s history. Maybe we will. We can’t rule it out. But we do know that his roommates say they once asked him if he picked the spas for sex because the women were Asian. And they say he denied it, saying he thought those spas were just the safest way to have quick sex. That needs to be checked out more. But the only piece of evidence about possible anti-Asian bias points away, not toward it.
And yet. Well, you know what’s coming. Accompanying one original piece on the known facts, the NYT ran nine — nine! — separate stories about the incident as part of the narrative that this was an anti-Asian hate crime, fueled by white supremacy and/or misogyny. Not to be outdone, the WaPo ran sixteen separate stories on the incident as an anti-Asian white supremacist hate crime. Sixteen! One story for the facts; sixteen stories on how critical race theory would interpret the event regardless of the facts. For good measure, one of their columnists denounced reporting of law enforcement’s version of events in the newspaper, because it distracted attention from the “real” motives. Today, the NYT ran yet another full-on critical theory piece disguised as news on how these murders are proof of structural racism and sexism — because some activists say they are.
For the New York Times, 10% reporting and 90% speculative propaganda. Washington Post, 6% reporting and 95% speculative propaganda. For a classical liberal, you begin to understand something when you can measure and contextualize it into something that can be demonstrated as a shared truth.
For fanatical ideologists, the facts don't matter. Forget that the journalists of the New York Times and Washington Post are something like 90% Democrat. The more salient point is that they are 90-94% fanatical ideologists.
It may be that the perpetrator does turn out to be a violent racist. But given the facts that we have right now, we can't report anything more than he might be, not that he is.
The devotion of the MSM to destructive propaganda goes beyond an excessive reporting of speculation (95%) rather than factual reporting. It spills over into direct misrepresentation. From The Media Got It Wrong: Police Captain Didn't Say the Atlanta Spa Killer Was Having a 'Bad Day' by Robby Soave.
A moment from the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office press conference on Wednesday quickly went viral: Jay Baker, a spokesperson for the police department handling the investigation into the horrific Atlanta spa murders, said that suspect Robert Aaron Long was having a bad day.
"He was pretty much fed up, kind of at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did," said Baker.
The comment struck many people as overly sympathetic toward Long, as if Baker was making excuses for someone who stands accused of killing eight Asian-American women in cold blood. A 20-second video clip of Baker's statement was shared on Twitter by Vox journalist Aaron Rupar and swiftly went viral, earning widespread condemnation. Many saw it as evidence that cops are desperate to discount the culpability of white male criminals. For instance, Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor and inventor of the term "intersectionality," described Baker's comments as "bone-chilling," and castigated him for refusing to acknowledge "the misogynistic dimensions of anti-Asian racism."
A police officer excusing Long's actions as merely the result of him having a "bad day" would indeed be contemptible. But that's not what Baker did. In fact, many of the people so infuriated about the quote were misled by Rupar's edit of the video.
The full video (the relevant section starts at about 13:50) makes clear that Baker was not providing his own commentary, but rather summarizing what Long had told the investigators. The "bad day" line was proceeded by a clarification that this was Long's own explanation, as related to the police. Baker did not endorse it.
Nor did the captain endorse Long's statement that the killings were unrelated to racism. He makes clear he's relaying comments from Long. "He claims that—and as the chief said this is still early—but he does claim that it was not racially motivated," said Baker. Again, the police spokesman is telling reporters what Long said, not applying his own spin. Later, when another reporter asked about this, Baker stepped aside so that Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms could explain the efforts being undertaken to protect Asian Americans at this time of heightened concern.
The MSM, based on their commitment to the noxious and racist ideologies of Critical Race Theory and Social Justice Theory are going into overdrive to make this story fit their narrative rather than the known facts.
Again, it may turn out that this is indeed a racial hate crime. The investigation is early. But all the facts currently available point to an unstable sexually frustrated individual submitting to his internal demons. Given what we know, this was not a racial hate crime, this was a mental health-induced crime. Despite the desperation of the MSM to make it otherwise.
The US is one of the most open and tolerant of nations (just look at how readily Americans marry outside their racial category) but the MSM fervently believes otherwise and wants to manufacture evidence to support their religious/ideological belief.
Read the whole Sullivan report. Also, Matt Taibbi's The Sovietization of the American Press is highly relevant.
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