Even the media is tired of CNN’s media bias
The systemic failures in police departments across the country continue to expose cable media’s shortcomings
Did you catch Don Lemon’s one-sided interview with the governor of Maryland and mayor of Baltimore on CNN the other night? Or how about Wolf Blitzer decrying the lack of police as a CVS pharmacy in Baltimore got looted?
It seems the vicious cycle of unexplained police killings and resulting protests — whether silent or riotous — is incomplete without mainstream media’s total ineptitude at reporting and deconstructing these events. Instead cable news continuously reveals the depth of its alignment with the very institutions it should be critically examining in the aftermath.
Much of the media coverage over the last two days — since protests turned violent over the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore police — has ironically focused on cable’s clueless inability to produce thoughtful journalism in response to such crises. Two articles in particular that ran on Slate and Salon yesterday echoed that critique so well they could’ve been published in collaboration.
The alternate title practically says it all in Justin Peters’ Slate column, “CNN’s coverage of the Baltimore riots Was shallow, sensationalistic, reductive, and statist. Surprise.” In it, he takes down the theme of CNN’s Monday night coverage, which boiled down to one question: “Where are the police?” he writes, continuing, “implicit in that question is the assumption that the police are the solution to social unrest, rather than agents of it.”
He highlights how broadcast news tends to overlook the big-picture context of the forest for the trees — especially when they’re burning. “But good journalism also tries to understand why a city is bleeding instead of just frowning at the wound,” he writes.
Meanwhile, Jack Mirkinson’s Salon column, “The media’s stunning Baltimore betrayal,” dissects Don Lemon’s exclusive interview with Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, in which Lemon continuously harped on one question: Why were protestors given “too much leeway,” as Lemon put it. Yet another example of how cable media only tends to interrogates politicians on their failure to uphold law and order after such powder kegs erupt rather than when the bodies of police victims start piling up. It’s surface-level journalism focused on questioning the effects rather than rooting out the cause.
As Mirkinson writes,
Instead, Lemon assumed the role of a tough-on-crime politician: The only question that mattered was why these people couldn’t be brought to heel. Anything else—anything that might truly have illuminated the situation we are witnessing in Baltimore—was left off the table.While such criticism is easy to find on social media — depending on who you follow on your timeline — it’s refreshing to see online outlets taking the established players to school.
That our elite media so consistently fails to probe this basic question is a measure of its blinkered priorities. When police commit violence against ordinary citizens, so many in the corridors of power caution against instant condemnation. We’re reminded that we need to wait until all the facts are in. We unpack each second of the interaction in the minute detail, searching for a logical reason why the cop pulled the trigger. Yet when the same media looks at people who have erupted in fury against this kind of state-sanctioned violence, those same calls for understanding tend to evaporate, and we are left with a kind of unthinking condemnation. There is no reason why protesters and even looters do not deserve to be heard and understood with the same solicitousness as the police who all too frequently kill their family and friends.
Of course, there are plenty examples of more nuanced forms of journalism in response to the situation in Baltimore. Oddly enough, one of them came from what it typically the most short-sighted forms of broadcast media: local TV news. In this interview with Baltimore gang members, a WBAL-TV reporter scored coverage that contradicted the popular media portrayal. Here’s hoping someone from CNN was watching.