Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough hammered his own platform for what he declared to be one of the root causes of the threat on police safety.
“My argument, must have been a year ago is, if you go around and the countervailing attitude on cable news shows 24 hours a day are that there are white cops driving around black neighborhoods looking to shoot teenagers with their hands up in the air while they’re surrendering, then you are going to start a war on cops, that you are spreading a lie that is going to have serious fallout,” Scarborough said. “The focus on cops and sort of this 24/7 rush to just basically paint all cops with the same brush has led to this sort of anger. And yeah, I do blame it on cable news. I do blame it on the churning of the past year. Nonstop churning. That leads to people wearing uniforms being a lot less safe today than they were before Ferguson.”
Scarborough tied last week’s shooting of a Roanoke, VA local television crew to what has been espoused on cable news in name of higher ratings.
“So the cable news network that did that, and actually there were a couple that did that, they are promoting the next Roanoke-style shooting,” he added. “And you can talk to experts and they will tell you that. Why this network felt the need, they were so desperate for a few rating points which really didn’t come around anyway, but were so desperate for a few ratings points that they actually gave the murderer what he wanted.”
(h/t Newsbusters)
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