In an over 3,000 word article, Jesse Singal at New York magazine attacked Breitbart News to defend a Black Lives Matter supporter who suggested a murdered Texas deputy deserved to be shot execution-style in the back of the head.
After Darren Goforth was brutally slain on August 28, Monica Foy wrote on Twitter: “I can’t believe so many people care about a dead cop and NO ONE has thought to ask what he did to deserve it. He had creepy perv eyes…” Breitbart News reported Foy’s comments, noting that her last tweet before mocking the murdered officer consisted solely of “#BlackLivesMatter” as part of continuing coverage of the violent anti-police rhetoric being propagated by members of the movement.
In his sprawling defense of Foy, Singal claims that Foy’s tweet asking what Deputy Goforth did to “deserve” being murdered was a “dry joke” to address what he describes as the “double standard on display in the aftermath of Goforth’s death.”
“Viewed after the fact, this was clearly an inopportune context in which to make this point — not to mention an insensitive and offensive way to make it,” he begrudgingly admits.
Singal claims that by reporting on this “inopportune” mocking of the murder of a husband and father of two, “far-right” Breitbart News created an online harassment campaign targeting Foy. Singal states in the article that a Breitbart spokesperson told him the report on Foy’s comments was part of coverage of the dangerous anti-police rhetoric coming from the Black Lives Matter movement. He then dismisses this explanation out of hand without providing the comment in question to readers.
The full comment provided to Singal from Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alexander Marlow, read:
Breitbart News is researching and reporting on the prevalence of attitudes that dehumanize law enforcement and diminish the deaths of law enforcement officers in a self-described “leaderless” movement. What the individuals promoting and supporting that movement think and publicly express is key to that. Media failures to highlight the violent nature and characteristics of the BLM is a major problem, just as was the case with the BLM sister movement, Occupy Wall Street.
Singal claims that Foy “couldn’t be further from a public BLM figure” and that the purpose of Breitbart News’ reporting on her was solely to “bring Foy ‘fame’ among Breitbart readers as retribution.” He doesn’t mention that in the wake of the outrage that Foy’s tweet sparked, she posted to Facebook, “There’s so much traffic on my Twitter, all bc I support the black lives matter movement,” in a series of posts mocking the response to her original tweet.