Posted on 04/19/2016 12:39:36 PM PDT by MarvinStinson
THE THIN BLUE LINE
Monday was the annual day of self-congratulation for traditional journalists – the announcement of the Pulitzer Prize winners. 2016’s awards (and finalists) recognized a parade of journalists whose work was overtly hostile to law enforcement.
The award for national reporting went to the Washington Post for (to quote the Pulitzer committee) “its revelatory initiative in creating and using a national database to illustrate how often and why the police shoot to kill and who the victims are most likely to be.”
The award for “explanatory reporting” went to ProPublica for a “startling examination and exposé of law enforcement’s enduring failures to investigate reports of rape properly and to comprehend the traumatic effects on its victims”.
The award for editorial writing went to Sun Newspapers in Charlotte, Florida “for fierce, indignant editorials that demanded truth and change after the deadly assault of an inmate by corrections officers.”
One of two finalists in editorial writing was the Baltimore Sun “for editorials that demanded accountability in the aftermath of the death of Freddie Gray”. The Sun was also a finalist for breaking news reporting on the Freddie Gray story, “for fast moving coverage of the rioting.”
The Post & Courier in South Carolina was a finalist “for its tenacious effort in obtaining video of a police officer shooting an unarmed Walter Scott …”
A finalist in local reporting was the Miami Herald “for the impressive reporting … on a local drug sting that cost tens of millions of dollars but yielded no significant arrests”.
What Monday’s awards reinforce is the premium that the journalistic establishment places on activist journalism that sides reflexively with prison inmates, victims of police shootings and the like (i.e. in many cases criminals), and that seeks to undermine law enforcement.
In the view of the Pulitzer Committee, and the newspaper editors clamoring for awards, cops and prison guards are not hard working, underpaid custodians of law and order. Rather they are corrupt, racist objects for “investigations” and exposes. And a way for journalists to win awards, engage in self-congratulation and, inevitably, enjoy remuneration.
We did not see awards for the kind of hard-nosed, fact-based reporting that calls establishment sacred cows into question, especially sacred cows who graze in Silicon Valley.
It’s a lot easier to go after some low-paid cops and prison guards.
I wonder how many people think them quite so underpaid after comparing non-salary benefits to the corporate world, but hey why barge in with questions about fact. It’s so irreverent.
If liberals are the only ones who are watching, maybe it’s because conservatives don’t want to keep track of sacred cows.
Also consider that the entire idea of a professional elite set of social guardians is one that liberals, not conservatives, came up with. Since when did we last ever assemble a posse to go after a crime suspect on the loose? Liberals shouldn’t be allowed to change the rules of a game and have conservatives continue to be slavishly loyal to the role that they traditionally used to play in the game but no longer actually do.
The Sun editorial board exposed a situation where guards were going around awakening inmates at all hours of the night and harassing them. In the specific instance, a group of officers proceeded to beat an inmate ultimately killing him, saying that he attacked them. He did only after the guards started beating on him. He lay handcuffed on the floor as guards beat him, hit him with barons and radios, and ultimately crushed his larynx.
That the awards reflected wrongdoing by police is not “attacking cops”, it is reporting about what actually goes on. With the prevalence of cell phone cameras and security cameras, what used to go unseen and unreported is now being revealed in all its ugliness.
Well the idea of some stratospheric echelon of social guardians that deals with all this stuff is a “liberal” idea anyhow. Where are the posses? Where are even the chaplains?
bmp
Thanks M.
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