Monday, June 8, 2020

The New Jersey Star-Ledger’s Shameful Glorification of Criminality


Under the headline Protests mount across U.S. over Floyd’s death, this picture appeared prominently on the front page of the May 30, 2020 New Jersey Star-Ledger.

Journal-Constitution

Under the photo is the following caption:

A protester smashes a window Friday at the CNN Center in Atlanta. Across the U.S., demonstrators carried signs and chanted their messages of outrage over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Protests also took place in New York, Denver, Houston and other cities, with some of them turning violent Friday night. In Atlanta, protesters set a police car on fire, struck officers with bottles, vandalized the headquarters of CNN and broke into a restaurant. Others used barricades to break police vehicle windshields and jumped from car to car. Associated Press; photo by Alyssa Pointer, Atlanta.

My emphasis. "A protester smashes a window. . .” Let that sink in.

The First Amendment lists “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances” as two of the inalienable rights of every individual. Destroying the property of others is not peaceable. It is not a petition, which is primarily an intellectual exercise. 

And it is certainly not legitimate protest. Shame on the Star-Ledger for equating destruction to protest. This is not protest. It is pure nihilism. It is blatant injustice perpetrated against innocents who had nothing to do with the actions of those Minneapolis cops. The caption that accompanies that picture describing this guy as a protestor does not lift him to a higher moral plain. It disparages legitimate protestors, dragging them all down to the level of this criminal thug.

This is the same newspaper that routinely rails against “fake news.” You can’t get faker than to call this a form of legitimate protest. This is the press at its worst.

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1 comment:

Mike Kevitt said...

"A protester smashes a window". The nature of such a statement sunk into my head back during the 1960s. It ought to sink into the head of any kid today just as easily. Anybody should have the integrity to keep the phenomenon of violence as a concept separate from the concept of protest, and to properly include it under the concept of CRIME, and to see this guy's action as a crime, not as a protest, contrary to any pseudo-journalism. I hope this guy is in jail under serious felony charges, without bail.