The Washington Post piece (8/27/20) was illustrated with a photo of an activist being attacked by a violent divide.
“US Political Divide Becomes Increasingly Violent, Rattling Activists and Police,” a Washington Post headline (8/27/20) declared last week. My high school English teacher would have taken a red pen to that title, pointing out that divides cannot be violent, only people can. People on both sides of a divide are becoming violent, is what the Post meant. And that is the real problem with this headline and the 2,800 words that follow.
False equivalences are among the biggest distortions that plague corporate journalism, as FAIR has documented over and over (e.g., Extra!, 11–12/04; FAIR.org, 9/30/04, 10/13/19, 11/22/19). Especially in an era when lying has been adopted as a key political strategy by the president and many others on the political right, coverage of “both sides” of an issue without plainly separating facts from fiction actively undermines democratic discourse, and the informed citizenry on which it depends.
People at the Washington Post are aware of the crucial role the media play in making democracy possible. So aware, in fact, that they introduced the paper’s first slogan in its history—“Democracy Dies in Darkness”—a month after President Donald Trump took office. It’s hard not to assume the timing was an indication of the Post’s expectation that a vigilant press would be especially necessary in a Trump presidency.
And yet.
In the extensive genre of corporate media obfuscation about right-wing paramilitary violence, this WaPo piece stands out even amidst some tough competition.
The Washington Post caption (8/27/20) is careful to avoid ascribing responsibility for violence, saying “a fight broke out…when two opposing groups clashed.”
The first four paragraphs of the piece describe an armed right-wing attack on a voter registration rally sponsored by a Democratic congressional candidate in Tyler, Texas (an attack the Post and most other national outlets didn’t bother to cover when it happened several weeks earlier—FAIR.org, 8/11/20). Hundreds of armed people descended on the peaceful crowd, yelling obscenities and physically assaulting them. But this is where the accurate reporting ends.
The next sentence refers to this scene as “scuffling.” It’s not how I would choose to describe a violent attack by heavily armed people. The term both downplays the level of violence and intimidation involved in the attack and vaguely intimates that both sides contributed to it. This trend continues throughout the article, referring to “a spate of exchanges” and a “series of disturbances” to describe a pattern of right-wing political violence directed at protests against police brutality. Later in the article, the Tyler assault is summed up as an incident where “brawls erupted.”
The article claims, without citation or qualification, that “people on both sides…have been filmed exchanging punches, beating one another with sticks and flagpoles, or standing face-to-face with weapons.” Upon finishing the article, the reader finds there were two specific incidents of left-wing menace mentioned: one where a group of protesters harassed restaurant goers for not raising their fists in solidarity with Black Lives Matter (an incident the Post admits was nonviolent); and the case of a driver who was beaten by protesters after crashing his truck.
In contrast to this single assault, the article documents eight recent right-wing assaults on protestors, in addition to the one in Tyler—six of them involving gunshots aimed at protesters, resulting in multiple injuries and four fatalities.
In other words, the article’s factual content itself belies its framing.
The picture it paints is not one of escalating clashes between left-wing and right-wing protesters. Rather, it describes an alarming increase in armed right-wing attacks on peaceful left-wing protesters, usually racial justice protesters. It is a pattern of intimidation and violence, one that is instantly recognizable to any student of 20th century history. Across the globe, privatized violence aimed at popular democratic demands is a hallmark of right-wing authoritarianism. The failure to name—and, worse, to try to obscure through misleading comparisons—what is plainly a threat to US democracy is a dereliction of journalistic duty.
This article’s sins don’t end there, alas. It manages to talk about these various armed attacks on people protesting police violence throughout the country without ever using the words “racism,” “racist” or “white supremacy.” Instead, we have “politically tinged” violence, “political and cultural debates” and, my favorite, “this year’s bitter political divisions”—as though 500 years of colonialism and white supremacy have nothing to do with 2020’s lethal toll on Black lives. And how the Post can fail to see the terrifying echoes of the post–Civil War century of privatized violence against Black people in this renewed wave of paramilitary violence is beyond me. A truck full of white people shooting at Black people demanding their civil and human rights is as American as apple pie.
Speaking of similarities of the racist past and the racist present, the police come away unscathed in this article. Police are “on the defensive,” and “face accusations” that they are failing to protect protesters against right-wing assaults and are “cozying up to” the paramilitaries. This is shameful bothsidesism. Police failure to protect protesters and their chumminess with the right wingers is documented fact—including in the article itself!—not some unproven “accusations.” Moreover, while the Post claims that “the images of looting and violence in American cities after [George] Floyd’s death” have become the right’s “rallying cry,” it fails to mention that said violence is overwhelmingly police violence against peaceful protesters, which is extensively documented.
Kenosha police in armored vehicles to a teenager armed with a military-grade rifle: “We appreciate you guys, we really do” (Rundown Live, 8/28/20).
In Kenosha, the same police who shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back let Kyle Rittenhouse walk away two days later after killing two people and wounding a third. Kenosha police had earlier thanked the paramilitary group Rittenhouse was there with—“We appreciate you guys, we really do”—but a day later arrested eight Seattle volunteers with the group Riot Kitchen, who had come to Kenosha to feed racial justice protesters. Rittenhouse became an instant hero on the right, while Blake lay shackled to his hospital bed. Meanwhile, both local police forces and federal paramilitary units from the Department of Homeland Security continue to suppress anti-violence protests with chemical weapons and other violent tactics.
Trump, who has refused to condemn right-wing violence, defending Rittenhouse’s deadly attack while falsely accusing the left of violence, has also said he plans to send armed sheriffs to polling places for the November election. That’s not in his legal authority to do, but that fact is completely besides the point. The point is that he is adding to the threats of voter intimidation at the polls, all while claiming widespread voter fraud and refusing to say he’ll accept the election results.
The United States is teetering on the brink of full-scale, white supremacist–fueled authoritarianism. In this context, it’s unfathomable that one of the nation’s leading papers could write a piece about right-wing paramilitary violence and reduce it to “scuffling” without any larger meaning or effect.
Instead of raising the alarm, the Washington Post all but shrugs its conclusion in this article:
With so many people showing up armed, including growing numbers of left-wing social-justice activists, police are warning people that they need to understand the risks associated with modern-day protests and political activity.
And just like that, the possibility of democratic protest—the engine of social and economic equality throughout history—is treated like some luxury extreme sport, where you need to consider carefully whether or not to participate. And if you get hurt, it’s your own fault.
Democracy is indeed dying in the dark. And it’s the Washington Post that turned off the lights.
ACTION ALERT: Messages can be sent to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Twitter @washingtonpost. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
Oh Washington Post—–you really used to be some paper. When I read that book, “All the Presidents Men,” wow, I thought this is what a newspaper is supposed to be. It was also amazing to see how intelligent the Congress was way back then. Well, not any more, Congress is sad, but YOU, Washington Post—where can the People clone another Ben Bradlee? Sometimes I google GOOGLE NEWS and there you are with a story that might be good—Nah–you have a paywall for $1—but Washington Post, , it is sad to say, but I don’t think you are worth a dollar—anymore. YOU could be, but Jeff Bezos is no Ben Bradlee.
It might be enlightening to compare such wilful bemusing with mainstream reporting in the Weimar era.
Whaddaya think?
“The United States is teetering on the brink of full-scale, white supremacist–fueled authoritarianism.”
*cough, cough*
The corporate-owned press is forever trying to deflect from the fact that the true fascists are the ones who control from behind the scenes, the ones who have the power to lockdown the world (even the USA) by edict, the ones who created the bogeyman Trump using their TV networks, newspapers, magazines and internet assets. The corporate media is forever, in every way possible, fanning the flames of division among the people, setting them against one another with the aim of preventing them from seeing their real enemy, the actual authoritarians, the predator class … the corporate media’s owners.
My ancestors on my mother’s side were “United Empire Loyalists” who had to escape what was to become the USA. Stories in my family were about this event as a pretext for asset grabbing , not the more popular version of a loyalty issue.
That history has made me and others a it distrusting , especially now when the “spin” you write about seems to be gaining prominence.
Great article.
Thank you for this “set things straight” article. I’m sick of corporate media (with ONE goal: $$$$$$$$$) controlling the way people think. Americans need to get it straight: 8 corporations own the mainstream media. Corporations want to make money. The headlines (usually written by a person other than the one who writes the article) are no better than click-bait, whether it’s Fox or NYT or WAPO “reporting.” Has it always been this way?
This is on point, and it’s not just WAPO that is carrying water for the law ‘n’ order status quo. I haven’t heard much different accounts of confrontations of liberation demonstrators with armed reactionaries on NPR or over any channel I respect. They all resort to bothsidesism to avoid offending somebody. Who? I would ask the WAPO management team who from the dark side in Washington or elsewhere is suggesting they tamp it down, if not Bezos himself. Innocent minds need to know.
I’m feeling persnickety today.
Aside from all the crazy political stuff there is this headline from a source that I follow…Truthout. To me, the below headline is a “false equivalent” which is, in my view, a passive-aggressive stance that plagues the media and it is a increasingly common practice in the era of Trumpism.
My former journalism teacher would have rapped a few knuckles.
“Trump May Have Broken the Law by Encouraging NC Residents to Try and Vote Twice”
For one thing, I don’t think “may” is the correct word here for a couple of reasons, including tense. This lack of declaration is what drags things on and on and on. It isn’t that Mr. Trump “may/might” have broken the law in this case. Three sources not needed here. He broke the law.
Bravo. And of course people on the right want to make a bigger issue out of “violence in the streets,” pinning responsibility on the left only. That’s another dishonest tactic in an attempt to re-elect a dishonest president. False moral equivalencies reach all the way back to Charlottesville here, when a white supremacist deliberately drove his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators, killing Heather Heyer and maliciously wounding eight others. Murderer Kyle Rittenhouse is the latest criminal who right wingers are choosing to defend after he wrecklessly and blatantly incited and inflamed unrest by traveling far away from his hometown to shoot at demonstrators, ultimately killing two. Painting him as acting in self defense is truly abhorrent and a clear example of how disgusting and dishonest one side can get. I don’t think any of this is real for the American right. I think it’s just a game they like to play to see how far it will go. If someone gets hurt or killed it’s just part of the entertainment for the living-room troll, the dirty, lying Congressman and the man in the Oval Office.
There have been 31 deaths related to the peaceful protests. Most have been committed by looters and other peaceful protesters. Some have been committed by right wingers tired of the looters, arsons, and disrupters. Honesty while you’re making a point is important
No murders have been committed by peaceful protesters. Honesty – that is rich. Should we read racism in the condescending term “looters and other peaceful protesters”? Watch the Sept. 4 March on Washington and the demonstration on the National Mall and see if your condescension holds up.
Yes, if you’d like to split hairs and say that peaceful protesters aren’t committing murders, you are correct. They are protesters on the same side of the peaceful protesters. They are in the same mix, but they are definitely not peaceful, they are murderers. Mick, you read racism into everything. It was just a matter of time until you called me a racist. So? Most of those “peaceful protesters” are white. You’re not much on intelligence, eh Mick?
I’ll let the readers be the judge.
“and refusing to say he’ll accept the election results.”
Was Biden also asked that? Hillary Clinton recently said he shouldn’t. After 2016 several Democrats called for faithless electors to moot the election and instead make Clinton the winner. And obviously Democrats like Schiff and media like Maddow still haven’t accepted the results.
And also obviously, it’s probably rational [for Biden, Trump, Sanders, anyone and everyone] to not immediately accept any election results in the US, which has one of the worst election systems [x 50 unique crappy state systems] on the planet.
“The United States is teetering on the brink of full-scale, white supremacist–fueled authoritarianism.”
Oh, I’m sure the dozens of countries and tens of millions of non-whites the US has killed over the past 130+ years are really worried about such a shocking turn of events.
Maybe lighten up on the hyperbole?
And the ahistory for the US internally. And lighten up too on the jingoism. Dorothee Benz appears to be one of the type of American Exceptionalist Jingoists who has a brain problem where they think instead of the US population being 5% of the total human population, it’s instead 95%.
“teetering on the brink”. Of a 5% human pop country which is as MLK Jr noted, the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. The greatest thing the US population could have done, and may still do, is to all die. Including American Exceptionalist Jingoist Dorothee Benz, who thinks Trump v. Biden is some kind of new existential threat to non-whites. Bolivians and Palestinians and billions of others won’t see any difference. Between those two, Trump and Biden, nor between privileged jingoist Dorothee Benz’s trivial US-centric fake outrage performance.
And yes this applies to fairness and accuracy in media. Hard to criticize biased media when an author is a jingoist who dismisses the non-white lives of billions of people.
And just a general criticism: All FAIR authors should stop using the author’s voice. There is no room for opinion, frankly. Either media is accurate or it isn’t.
Absolutely excellent article. It just blows my mind that armed right wing radicals who perpetrate violence on peaceful protesters never seems to be mentioned. It’s always blamed on the left.
In a global context, all Americans are the right wing radicals who perpetrate violence. A hundred thousand dead Yemeni children, for example, don’t really care about internal US politics of those who murdered them.
Don’t care about Obama or Trump’s FOX news or MSNBC excuses or rationalization. They are a massive pyramid of skulls.
I hope you and Dorothee Benz adopted some of their body parts. IIRC there’s a US jingoist virtue-signaling app for that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_during_the_George_Floyd_protests A simple research by the author would have produced an opposite and more balanced article. Was Benz lazy, uninformed, or manipulative.
It seems at FAIR people see whatever bias they want to see. Rittenhouse was chased by a convicted paedophile who had been caught on camera behaving aggressively earlier in the evening and before anyone had fired a shot. When Rittenhouse tried to move away from the scene he was pursued again and attacked. He did not appear to kill any “peaceful protestors”. Good luck with making excuses for “peaceful protestors” with criminal records for violence and sexually abusing minors.
When you excuse violence at these BLM / Antifa far-left protests you are bound to end up in a situation where violent people with criminal records turn up to protest and look for trouble. In the case of Rittenhouse they got what they were looking for.
Mike, you and I are on the same side. I am going to wait until the facts come out. It looks like Rittenhouse was defending himself, but let’s see what a jury says. We don’t want to rush to judgement like our good folks on the left.
It seems at FAIR people see whatever bias they want to see. Rittenhouse was chased by a convicted paedophile who had been caught on camera behaving aggressively before the incident and before anyone had fired a shot. When he tried to move away from the scene he was pursued again and attacked. He did not appear kill any “peaceful protestors”. Good luck with making excuses for “peaceful protestors” with criminal records for violence and sexually abusing minors.
When you excuse violence at these BLM / Antifa far-left protests you are bound to end up in a situation where violent people with criminal records turn up to protest and look for trouble. In the case of Rittenhouse they got what they were looking for.
Yes. Democracy dies in obfuscation or the refusal of the “free press” to cover blatant attacks on journalism and whistle blowers.
When will FAIR.org decide to tackle the mistreatment of Julian Assange? Only once he’s extra-legally brought to the U.S. for the 2nd of two show trials and a guaranteed conviction of a crime that it wasn’t even possible for him to commit because it doesn’t exist?
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/media-freedom-show-me-the-msm-journalist-opposing-the-torture-of-assange/
The corporate media selects its mouthpieces. Scotland has become an extreme example, where 55% of the population support Independence, but only about 5% of state and corporate media “journalists” support Independence.
Julian Assange has been a light in this darkness. Wikileaks have opened a window into the secret world of war crime, murder and corruption that underlies so much of the governance we live under throughout the “free” world. Coming in the wake of the public realisation that we had been blatantly lied into the destruction of Iraq, there was a time when it seemed Assange would lead us into a new age where whistleblowers, citizen journalists and a democratic internet would revolutionise public information, with the billionaire stranglehold shattered.
That seems less hopeful today, as the internet world itself corporatised. Julian is in jail and continuing today is an extradition hearing that has been one long abuse of process. The appalling conditions of solitary confinement in which he has been kept in the high security Belmarsh Prison, with no access to his legal team or a working computer, to his papers or to his mail, have taken a huge toll on his physical and mental health. The UN Special Representative has declared he is subject to torture. A media which is up in arms about the very dubious attack on Navalny, has no emotion for state torture victim Assange other than contempt.
It is constantly asked by Julian’s supporters why the media do not see the assault on a publisher and journalist as a threat to themselves. The answer is that the state and corporate media are confident in their firm alliance with the powers that be. They have no intention of challenging the status quo; their protection from those kicking Assange lies in joining in with the kicking.
Speaking of obfuscation, it appears a couple of commenters here (Mike and Tim) are trying their best with doing it to the issue here. Pointing at criminal records and using marginalized communities in an attempt to distract from what’s actually going on. Shame on those two deceitful tools and anyone like them!
Read the link I posted above. Then tell me who is obfuscating the facts. Is it possible for a leftist to argue without ad hominem attacks?
Read the link I posted above. Then tell me who is obfuscating the facts. Is it possible for a leftist to argue without ad hominem attacks?