In its “long march through the institutions,” the left has been extraordinarily successful in capturing the press, where its dominance is just as thorough as it is in education. Every story must be covered in a way that makes Republicans or anyone who opposes the statist agenda look bad. The media will concoct stories out of nothing if they think they can create sympathy for their favored “oppressed” groups or animosity towards their perceived enemies — see, for example, the Nick Sandmann case.
Conversely, real stories that can’t somehow be slanted to advance “progressivism” must be ignored. That’s the case with the recent murder in Charlotte, N.C., of a young Ukrainian refugee by a black man with a long history of violence. He ought to have been behind bars, but thanks to a justice system that is full of people who see criminals as society’s victims, he was at liberty to kill.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds reflects on this case:
They’re not even making excuses. They might say that violence on commuter trains isn’t news — though I don’t know if that’s true when you’re talking Charlotte instead of the Bronx. They might say that black on white violence isn’t news, though that’s kind of an iffy position. Everyone knows, and DOJ statistics demonstrate, that’s it’s much more common than white on black, but do they want to invoke that as a justification? Maybe they don’t want to encourage random violence by crazy people? But they cover that all the time.
When she finally could not avoid talking about the killing, Charlotte’s lefty mayor lamely said that we can’t arrest our way out of social problems like violent crime. But the assailant in this case had previously been arrested, several times, and released. Imagine if this had been a shooting of a black man — Mayor Vi Lyles would no doubt be screeching about the need for gun control. According to leftists, we can in fact legislate solutions to the problem of violence, as long as it suits their political needs.
Reynolds calls the tactic of ignoring everything that hurts the left “rabble-snoozing.” He continues,
Since the number one rule for the legacy media is ‘thou shalt not support anything Trump does,’ naturally the Zarutska murder can’t be covered. And it won’t be, unless they can find — or manufacture — some alternative angle that will make Trump look bad. So far, they’ve come up a dry hole.
Read the whole thing.