05/06/2015
The Baltimore riots have many lessons, but they are also a perfect illustration of Reverse Reporting — in which our politicized Main Stream Media seeks to “debunk” the truth. This is accomplished by putting forward ever-shifting, mutually contradictory narratives united in the presumption of guilt by hated white males.
And this is performed by the media in matters big and small. For example, the Baltimore Sun initially claimed there were no riots, only to hastily rewrite its story .
After that lie fell apart, the AP reported there was only one day of disorder. [Baltimore mayor lifts curfew 6 days after riots, by Juliet Linderman and Ben Nucklos, Associated Press, May 3, 2015]. However, digging through buried sources and reports on social media show unrest and arrests continued long after the “one day” riots [Latest on police-custody death: court waits could increase, AP Archive, April 29, 2015].
When the MSM and the clickbait sites of the Gawker network addressed the riots, they simultaneously downplayed and justified violence against whites. At the ostensible sports blog Deadspin, Tom Ley smirked about “handwringing about some smashed windows and traffic jams” and praised Baltimore Orioles executive John Angelos, who all but ignored the violence against his own fans.
In a kind of typographical Freudian slip, Ley wrote, “On Sunday, the peaceful protest turned and chaotic [sic], and there instances were of vandalism in the area surrounding Camden Yards, where the Baltimore Orioles were playing a game. [Baltimore Orioles Exec Offers Eloquent Defense Of Freddie Gray Protests by Tom Ley, Deadspin, April 27, 2015].
There’s a missing word in the phrase “turned and chaotic.” That word is “violent.” Ley and his editor revealingly neglected or censored the most important word.
As you might expect, most of the critical commenters on the piece were deleted and/or blocked and those few who slipped through were denounced as “Nazis.” Other comments asserted that the non-violent white victims deserved to be brutally beaten because they were “racist.” (“There were plenty of drunken Orioles’ fans yelling at the protesters, and not exactly using language that would get you a good SAT score, either.” “Cuts both ways.”)
Yet the only reason we found out about violence directed against baseball fans in the first place is because Breitbart reporter Matt Boyle attended the Orioles game with his brother. Thus he was able to chronicle what happened when rioters attacked fans [War Zone: Baltimore Erupts Into Violence, Chaos as #BlackLivesMatter Riots Rage by Matt Boyle, Breitbart, April 25, 2015].
As you might expect, the MSM responded by attacking the messenger [Rightwing media cynically exploits unrest in Baltimore to Push ‘Race War’ Narrative, by Adam Johnson, Alternet, April 26, 2015].
As part of the deception, some reporters went beyond lying by actively trying to distort the facts of the unrest at Camden Yards and pin the blame on drunken, racist whites.
For example, a picture of black man robbing a white woman was widely circulated. But a supposed reporter named Caitlin Goldblatt [@trustpunch on Twitter] of the Baltimore City Paper claimed she stopped the woman from robbing a black man (who was holding a giant purse for some reason. And remember, if you think it unlikely that a small white woman would rob a black man of his purse, you must be racist.)
But it’s not just Goldblatt.
Goldblatt’s City Paper “reporter” colleague, Brandon Soderberg [@notrivia on Twitter]posted a picture of the same white, redheaded victim, trying to stop a black rioter from throwing a bar stool through a big, beautiful, plate glass saloon window.
Soderberg accompanied the picture with the surreal caption that the victim was “provoking” the “demonstrators.”
These deceptions, along with the changing stories of the lying reporters involved, have been exhaustively debunked by several sources. Even the rioter who tried to steal the purse has been identified.
Besides, we actually have videos of the attacks that give the lie to the claims of white “racism.” The whites were doing nothing but breathing while white.
Some of the reporters involved with City Paper have already begun changing their stories.
But no one else in the MSM is calling them out. It is left to the Internet to do the job that professional journalists and the City Paper’s ostensible competition should be doing.
In today’s America, reporters actively try to conceal the truth, and only anonymous online detectives (and people like me!) actually do what any other generation would have called basic journalism.
Indeed, the MSM even goes out of its way to celebrate people who inadvertently showed what the riots were all about. For example, Fox News reporter Leland Vittert was in the war zone, interviewing ordinary rioters and their respectable supporters.
Many of the rioters and looters were identifiable by their masks. Vittert told Fox News studio host Megyn Kelly he didn’t dare ask them why they wore masks.
Vittert’s attempt to interview young black men on the street were in vain. He had to keep moving away from interview subjects, due to their refusal or inability to stop cursing. He would say “No cursing,” and move on to the next interviewee, who would curse… rinse, lather, repeat.
Between mutterings about “frustration” and “questions,” the few young black men who didn’t curse were largely unintelligible.
One exception however: Councilman Nick Mosby (pictured right–email him) husband of Marilyn Mosby, the Baltimore State’s Attorney who indicted the police officers. He explained to Vittert that they had made the police move back from the rioters. When Vittert pointed out that (black) people were looting a grocery and a liquor store in front of them at that very moment, Mosby got mad at him, said that was not productive, and stormed off.
The YouTube Channel that posted this ("Melanin News") titled it Baltimore City Councilman Nick Mosby speaks to Racist Fox News reporter.
This has led to the MSM calling Mosby a rising star [Councilman’s star rises fast amid Baltimore unrest, by Gene Demby, NPR, April 30, 2015]
Indeed, on CNN, black intellectual Marc Lamont Hill praised the rioting as a way of airing black grievances, noting only “we should be strategic in how we riot” [CNN Commentator: ‘We Should Be Strategic in How we Riot, by Daniel Halper, The Weekly Standard, April 28, 2015].
CNN actually went so far as to praise crowds that defied a curfew, initially titling a story “Baltimore protests: Crowds stand firm after curfew.” CNN has since changed that headline to “Baltimore protests: Crowds, police stand off after curfew.” But besides the cached search results, the story still has that title in reprints from local news networks [Baltimore: Crowds stand firm after curfew, by Greg Botelho, Holly Yan, and Dana Ford, CNN reprinted at WTAE 4 Pittsburgh, April 28, 2015].
But what do you expect? The MSM can’t even be honest about itself, let alone about the events it is ostensibly covering. The only good news is that some people are seeing through the deception and are able to dismantle it.
Unfortunately, millions more continue to believe the endlessly repeated deceptions of those who hold the Megaphone.
And as long as the Megaphone continues to reinforce that Big Lie of overwhelming white racism, the next place to fall victim to a long, hot summer of black riots could be…anywhere in America.
Nicholas Stix is a New York City-based journalist and researcher, much of whose work focuses on the nexus of race, crime, and education. He spent much of the 1990s teaching college in New York and New Jersey. His work has appeared in Chronicles, The New York Post, Weekly Standard, Daily News, New York Newsday, American Renaissance, Academic Questions, Ideas on Liberty and many other publications. Stix was the project director and principal author of the NPI report, The State of White America-2007. He blogs at Nicholas Stix, Uncensored.
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