The media keeps pushing these stories and they ultimately keep imploding, but not before a lot of lies and harm is done.
Stop me if you’ve heard seen this one before: the now tiresome and wholly predictable cycle of news coverage when a white police officer shoots and kills an unarmed black teenager:
Step 1: Build the false narrative. Mainstream media outlets report that a police officer has shot an unarmed black teenager, and provide extensive coverage of the victim’s grieving family alongside flattering photographs and background stories of said teenager. The event is followed within hours–hours!–by well-organized protests, family spokespersons, and (naturally) lawyers (these last two typically combined).
Step 2: Watch the false narrative implode. These mainstream media reports are inevitably followed by factually correct and comprehensive reports of the victim’s violent and criminal background and actions at the time of the shooting. These facts place responsibility for his death squarely on the victim’s own shoulders, and make it clear that the police acted appropriately.
Sounds familiar, right? In case you’ve not yet had enough of that cycle, allow me to introduce you to the late Tony Robinson, the “unarmed black teenager” who was shot and killed by a veteran Wisconsin police officer this past Friday evening (so, not even 48 hours prior to the writing of this post).
Here’s the picture the media has been running of the beautiful gentle teen:
His Twitter account (warning for lots of pornographic pictures and sexual tweets) is mostly about sex with “bitches” with some about drugs like this tweet:
