Why do I blog as much about media bias as I do?
Because we keep getting “neutral” media reporting like this first sentence from an Associated Press “report” about a public meeting being held in Ferguson, Missouri:
Effortsby city leaders in the St. Louis suburb where an unarmed black18-year-old was fatally shot by a white police officer to repair thelocal government\’s fractured relationship with its residents got offto a rocky start Tuesday at the first public meeting of electedofficials since Michael Brown\’s death.
Could that possibly be more biased?
Michael Brown is characterized entirely as a victim: “an unarmed Black 18 year old shot by a White police officer”. No mention at all of circumstances…such as the police officer\’s account, seconded by at least one eye witness, that Brown, who was 6\’ 4″ tall and weighed close to 300 lbs, who had just robbed a convenience store, and who, according to the autopsy, had been smoking weed, was taking a run at him.
The one and only purpose of that selective wording is to elicit sympathy for Brown and anger towards the police officer. It is light years away from anything that could even remotely be characterized as neutral reporting. But there it is, right at the beginning of an Associated Press article – which means it went out to pretty much every media venue in the country.
Why do I blog as much about media bias as I do? This is why.
