Posted on 04/10/2007 10:30:05 AM PDT by lqclamar
Finally, I wanted to recognize the accomplishment of national correspondent Howard Witt, whose story led to the recent release of a 15-year-old girl from a small town in Texas who was imprisoned for shoving a hall monitor. Her sentence was indeterminate, from a minimum of 9 months to up to 7 years, when she reached 21.
The story of Shaquanda Cotton's imprisonment may be testament to residual racism, but the story of her freeing is testament to the combined strength of the old and new media and to the power of bearing witness to injustice.
In his front-page story on March 12, Witt noted that the same judge sentenced another 14-year-old, a white girl, to probation after she was convicted of arson for burning down her family's home.
The story created an immediate outrage, fueled by 815 Internet blogs and nearly a quarter-million references on Google.
"It was a breathtaking marriage of two different functions," said Witt, who is based in Houston. "We can write the story but we can't control the impact. The bloggers spread and pushed and amplified the story and stirred people to action."
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
FACT: Cotton was a problem student with a long history of disciplinary issues and threatening violence against school officials. At her trial two teachers testified about her past threats of violence, and a third testified about a threat she made to set the school on fire. At the time of her sentencing she was attending an alternative school for children with disciplinary problems.
FACT: Cotton was offered a two year probation plea deal that reduced her crime to a misdemeanor. Both the District Attorney and Cotton's own defense attorney have publicly confirmed the deal was offered, though Cotton's mother now denies it. Cotton's mother refused the deal at the time because she insisted her daughter was the victim of a racist conspiracy and refused to consent to a required probation officer evaluation of herself as Shaquanda's guardian during the probation period.
FACT: The 14 year old white girl got probation because her parents agreed to the same deal that Cotton's crazy mother refused.
FACT: Witt's story was intended to create a manufactured "outrage" and did so by presenting half truths and outright lies about the case. Its opening paragraph likened Cotton's "plight" to public lynchings on the Paris town fairgrounds 100 years ago. Witt did not disclose the fact that Cotton's mother refused the plea deal. He also lied in his article about the severity of her past disciplinary problems and lied about the shoving incident, claiming that the hall monitor was uninjured.
FACT: The amplification of Witt's story by "bloggers" was directly intended by Witt himself. Witt wrote several sympathetic followup columns that played up allegedly "spontaneous" outrage and protest marches outside the courthouse. Witt DELIBERATELY withheld information that these "protests" were the carefully coordinated work of the Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party.
FACT: Witt deliberately withheld information about the Nation of Islam ties of Cotton's mother Creola and Cotton's spokesman Brenda Cherry to make them more sympathetic. Cherry was presented in Witt's columns as a local "civil rights activist." Cherry is in fact a racist bigotted radical who heads a group called Concerned Citizens for Racial Equality that is openly affiliated with the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panthers. Creola Cotton is a member of the same group. Both Cherry and Cotton have been quoted about the case in Nation of Islam and other black nationalist publications where they have described the case as racist conspiracy run by a white-dominated government. Cotton and Cherry have both publicly called several black teachers who testified against Shaquanda "Uncle Toms," "Plantation Negroes," and race traitors.
FACT: The Nation of Islam's hands are all over this case, including Cherry and the Nation of Islam-led protests and blog entries. A streaming video was posted of Shaquanda's release from the juvenile prison facility by Witt on the Chicago Tribune page last week. As is plainly evident from the video, Shaquanda's mother is accompanied throughout by a large entourage of suited bow-tie wearing Nation of Islam personnel. Several Nation of Islam affiliated myspace accounts and blogs were created specifically to highlight Cotton's case, and Cotton was featured prominently in the Nation of Islam newspaper the "Final Call" - http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_3360.shtml
Here’s a Shaquanda and Creola Cotton alert for ya.
Hope your kitty feels better!
}:-)4
Thanks! She’s feeling fine - just needs her pills for two or three more days. She’s a cranky beast any time.
And now we know the rest of the story.....
Nothing like the sanctimony of a Yankee liberal "journalist."
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