The attempt to tie right-wing websites to Dylann Roof’s massacre even while acknowledging he had no ties to them and opposed their disavowal of violence is just the latest example of the media “making the innocent guilty.”
by Alexander Hart
Burying the lede? In a front-page article about the danger of “White Supremacist” websites in the wake of Dylann Roof massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the New York Times reports an extraordinary fact as a mere digression: investigators believe that no online “white supremacists” either “encouraged or assisted in the deadly shootings.” [White Supremacists Extend Their Reach Through Websites, by Michael Wines & Stephanie Saul, July 5, 2015].
This is becoming standard Main Stream Media practice when faced with Narrative Collapse: report the inconvenient fact, then carry on regardless as if it didn’t exist.
Thus while a few other news articles mention the lack of any “white supremacists” encouraging him, and the NYT also briefly mentioned it in a previous article about Roof’s connections to online “white supremacy” [Charleston Suspect Was in Contact With Supremacists, Officials Say, by Michael D. Schmidt, July 3, 2015], I could not find a single article that devoted more than one sentence to this key fact.
This is not new for the New York Times or the MSM in general. (You can say THAT again. –Ed.) For example, the day Eric Holder’s Justice Department cleared Darren Wilson of any wrongdoing in the shooting of Michael Brown, the New York Times’ lead headline was Ferguson Police Tainted by Bias, Justice Dept Says [By Matt Apuzzo And John Eligon, March 4, 2015] with a subhead for a shorter article On Civil Rights, No Case Against Officer [By Erik Eckholm And Matt Apuzzo, March 4, 2015]taking second billing.
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