My name is Hippocritico and I’m here to help my friends in the mainstream media protect their journalistic legacies by making sure they don’t come off as brazen, biased, hypocrites by covering a particular story that hurts one political party and not covering a similar story that hurts a different one.
Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane of The Washington Post are obviously concerned with issues of discrimination in America. Here’s their coverage of an event that’s now famous for never really happening:
Black lawmakers said some protesters hurled racial epithets at them, and in one instance, spit upon them.
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) said that he was walking into the Capitol to vote when a protester spat on him. Police quickly responded and detained the protester, Cleaver said in a statement, but the lawmaker declined to press charges.
Others hurled epithets at Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a former civil rights leader, and Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) as they left the Capitol after Obama’s speech.
“They were shouting the N-word,” Carson told reporters. “It was like a page out of a time machine.”
However, if Lorie and Paul are looking for what could be a real story and scandal involving discrimination, I’ve laid it all out for them below.
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On election day 2008, members of the New Black Panthers were caught on tape intimidating voters outside of a polling place in Philadelphia. Here’s the video in case you missed it:
[youtube neGbKHyGuHU nolink]
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After this incident, the Bush Justice Department filed charges against three men and the New Black Panther Party. The case was won and then for reasons we still can’t understand, Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department dropped the charges.
But this is where the story get even more intriguing…
Former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams has recently become what journalists love most, a government Whistle-blower, alleging there are people in the Justice Department refusing to take seriously any case where the defendants are black and the plaintiffs white. In other words, he’s claiming that discriminatory practices are ongoing. In case you missed it, here’s the video:
[youtube fjEpv1mGBF0 nolink]
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I’m not unsympathetic to the fact that Media Matters has spent the month of July going all out hoping to scare you away from covering this story and that Keith Olbermann has done a little water-muddying with the shameless use of a distinction without a difference.
But I have faith that Media Matters and Olbermann do not call the editorial shots in your newsroom and now that the facts of what could be a very big and important story have been presented to you, you will proceed with diligence and vigor.
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