Wednesday, June 03, 2015

Uncritically "Reporting" Police Accusations

Glenn Greenwald wrote in The Intercept In Boston, Media Again Trash a Police Shooting Victim by Uncritically "Reporting" Police Accusations

"There are numerous questions raised by all of this. If Rahim was so dangerous, why didn’t the constant surveillance result in any charges? If — as the media spent all day claiming — he was on the verge of executing a horrific terror attack, why didn’t law enforcement agents have an arrest warrant or even search warrant? What was their intention in approaching him this way? Were they wearing uniforms, and — supposedly believing he was an ISIS operative eager to kill police — did they do anything to make him feel threatened?"

"The point here is not that the police claims are untrue. The point is that nobody knows if they are true or not. Yet they were aggressively and uncritically amplified by an always pro-police media, resulting in the vilification of the dead victim as an ISIS-linked terror operative within hours after his death. Precisely as intended, that, in turn, precluded any rational discussion of whether the killing was justified."

Greenwald can come across as shrill, but his questions are good and usually provide a lesson in critical reading.

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