One ongoing theme of this blog has been, \u201cget both sides of the issue before you judge.\u201d A classic example of why is the 20-part series in this blog that ran from July 13, 2013 into September of that year.\u00a0 CNN and some other \u201cnews\u201d outlets made the shooting of a young attacker by an armed citizen into a racist murder to rival the lynching of Emmett Till, and that became a lynching all its own before a jury heard the facts and saw the evidence and acquitted George Zimmerman.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re seeing something of a replay of that in Ferguson, Missouri in the still-controversial shooting of Michael Brown, 18, by police officer Darren Wilson.\u00a0 CNN has at least put a few voices of reason on the air, such as David Klinger and Mark O\u2019Mara, whose message is one I share: \u201cWe can\u2019t judge until we have all the evidence, and we don\u2019t have that yet!\u201d<\/p>\n
I just got home from California, where amidst the whole media blitz I ran across a couple of issues of an alternative newspaper out of their state Capitol, the Sacramento News & Review. Amidst the usual \u201cThe shooting of Brown is unconscionable\u201d (8\/28\/14, Page 15) stuff, I found this refreshing bit of honesty by the paper\u2019s on-the-ground-in-Ferguson reporter, Sean Stout:<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t feel like a journalist for a single second I was in Ferguson,<\/em>\u201d wrote Stout on Page 9 of the same edition. \u201cI felt like a Brown supporter. I sided with the Ferguson organizers yearning for peace, racial equality and justice for the senseless murder of an unarmed youth.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Well, Sean Stout, God bless you at least for saying so.\u00a0 The \u201cunconscionable\u201d statement was in an essay\/editorial, where opinions including that one belong.\u00a0 Stout\u2019s statement and article were in the News section.\u00a0 He gave total disclosure that what he was writing in \u201cnews\u201d was in fact \u201copinion.\u201d<\/p>\n And that\u2019s a lot more honesty than I\u2019ve seen in a lot of the rest of the mainstream media as regards this case, from reporters and news editors who are just as biased to one side as Stout, but don\u2019t have the integrity to admit it.<\/p>\n If Officer Darren Wilson, an average size man judging by photos, turned into Elastic Man and reached up from the seat of his patrol car and grabbed the six-foot-four Mr. Brown by the throat and brutalized him, and then shot him in the back as he ran \u2013 as some of his accusers say \u2013 he deserves to go to prison.\u00a0 But if \u2013 as his defenders say \u2013 he was attacked violently by Brown, who tried to take his gun and kill him with it, and then shot Brown when he turned from a short run away and lunged again at the officer he had already seriously injured, it has all the hallmarks of a justifiable homicide.<\/p>\n Which is it?\u00a0 With so much evidence still out\u2026<\/p>\n We. Can\u2019t. Yet. KNOW!<\/p>\n