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In our opinion: It's time to learn from the dangerously quick judgments of the past
The Deseret News ^ | September 4, 2014 | The Editors

Posted on 09/05/2014 4:30:34 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Two years ago, the media reported that Trayvon Martin, a young, unarmed black man, had been gunned down by a white assailant named George Zimmerman, and racism was the reason. But then the facts started to dribble out, and many of the assumptions that drove the initial outrage turned out to be inaccurate.

The Martin shooting wasn’t the first time the media has gotten it wrong. Many may not remember the case of Richard Jewell, the security guard who alerted police about pipe bombs left in a park during the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. He was wrongfully charged with the crime of planting the bombs himself, and he was virtually tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. When it became clear that Jewell was innocent, tremendous damage had been done to his reputation.

Utah has its own share of examples of rushes to judgment. Theories about Elizabeth Smart’s kidnapping were reported and discussed, and people were implicated who had nothing to do with the crime. Patience would have spared a great deal of unnecessary pain.

These stories and more should have taught all of us that jumping to conclusions at the outset of a volatile media frenzy is foolish at best and dangerous at worst.

Ferguson, Missouri, proves that is a lesson America still hasn’t learned.

The first media dispatches about Michael Brown’s shooting in Ferguson were unsettlingly similar to initial reports about Martin....

(Excerpt) Read more at deseretnews.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: ferguson; richardjewell; trayvon; zimmerman
Comments?
1 posted on 09/05/2014 4:30:34 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3201012/posts


2 posted on 09/05/2014 4:38:07 PM PDT by IChing
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Sadly, the race baiters in this country refuse to listen to the FACTS of these incidents, even when pictures are published backing the facts up. They would be happier if the shooters were actually beaten to death by the innocent little lambs who attacked them in the first place. After all, the president and Attorney General have shown them this is so.


3 posted on 09/05/2014 4:39:37 PM PDT by Old Grumpy
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

What about the “the TEA Party and Sarah Palin caused the Gabby Giffords” shooting,” or the “Theater Shooter James Holmes is a TEA Party member” stories?


4 posted on 09/05/2014 4:46:55 PM PDT by Steely Tom (How do you feel about robbing Peter's robot?)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

A lesson America hasn’t learned? I think the most of us would urge caution, to get the facts BEFORE we start with the “judgment” statements about the victim or the perpetrator. It was the feeding frenzy of the media, trying to make a story out of everything possible. Obama wants chaos. His lapdogs are doing their best to create it.


5 posted on 09/05/2014 4:52:44 PM PDT by Shery (Pray for righteousness to be restored and for the peace of Jerusalem.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

” and many of the assumptions that drove the initial outrage turned out to be inaccurate.”

They weren’t assumptions. They were part of a clever propaganda machine. They spent over a week putting together the ‘facts’ and then flooded the media with their false story.


6 posted on 09/05/2014 4:56:05 PM PDT by TexasGator
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

“Comments?”

Oh, hell yeh. The way to stop the MSM propagandists is to meet these 50 IQ apes one by one, in a dark parking lot with no witnesses around, and read them the riot act.

There is no group more cowardly than left wing, lying “journalists,” except maybe the RINOs infesting the the GOP.


7 posted on 09/05/2014 5:35:19 PM PDT by sergeantdave
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Don't forget the near lynching of the Duke lacrosse players.

No doubt in my mind that a Durham jury would have convicted. They would not have survived long in a NC state prison.

8 posted on 09/05/2014 6:37:52 PM PDT by Ken H
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Ummm...wow.

When there’s even a smidgen of righteous indignation in the form of actually reporting ‘news’ rather than the SOP of ‘culture of chaos’, then maybe...just maybe.

In the meantime, most of the rest of us are resigned to our ‘dangerously quick judgments’ of the media at-large and those they support with unrelenting bias.

One bright note: The editorial is media-written & directed at the media for once. But I won’t hold my breath for a crescendo or a chorus, let alone even a quorum.

One pious statement is hardly an act of contrition...a fart on the wind...


9 posted on 09/05/2014 8:40:24 PM PDT by logi_cal869 (I see stupid people)
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