Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR):
"A New York Times piece (8/24/14) about Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager shot dead in Ferguson this month by police officer Darren Wilson, has been the subject of harsh criticism because of its declaration that Brown was ‘no angel.’ In the version that ran in today's print edition, the Times' John Eligon writes:
‘Michael Brown, 18, due to be buried on Monday, was no angel, with public records and interviews with friends and family revealing both problems and promise in his young life.’ …
As Jack Mirkinson noted at the Huffington Post (8/25/14), the Times (8/24/14) also presents a profile of Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who killed Brown, in today's paper. His standing in relation to the angels is not discussed, nor do we know what kind of music he liked or whether he smoked pot. All we can piece together is that, according to some, he is a ‘well-mannered, relatively soft-spoken, even bland person…a reaction to a turbulent youth.’
->The NY Times coverage of Michael Brown’s murder fails in other ways as well. Suggestions that Brown moved toward and menaced officer Wilson before the shooting were printed without revealing that law enforcement officers were the source.
------
USA Today:
"Freedom of the press is under siege in Ferguson, Mo. Two reporters, one from The Washington Post and one from The Huffington Post, told of being roughed up and apprehended briefly for nothing more than literally recharging their batteries at a McDonald's. They weren't at a crime scene. They weren't in the way of the police. They identified themselves as reporters. But police saw fit to order them out of the McDonald's, and when they didn't move quickly enough for the officers' taste, they were arrested.
That's not all. Police fired tear gas at journalists from the cable news channel Al Jazeera America. Al Jazeera said its staffers were easily identifiable as working journalists, and that police continued to fire even after they shouted ‘press.’ After the journalists fled, officers took down their television lights.
A photojournalist with St. Louis television station KSDK, filming an altercation in which the police were involved, had his camera hit by a ‘bean bag round’ fired from a rifle. KSDK journalists say they were never told to leave the area."
-->The NY Times didn't print this story. Our nation’s premier newspaper was too busy reporting the police account of what happened on the streets of Ferguson.
------
Ebony:
"The St. Louis County Police Department that killed Michael Brown and initially placed Ferguson on siege has trained with the Israeli military. Former County Police Chief Timothy Fitch was one of 15 American officials to participate in a weeklong training in Israel three years ago.
The April 2011 National Counter-Terrorism Seminar (NCTS) was sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). It brought together leaders from the largest American police departments, the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with members of the Israeli National Police, Israel Defense Forces and other intelligence organizations. …
Over 9,000 American officials have trained with Israeli police and military units on responding to civilian protests and terrorism. These operations reflect failure to distinguish between the apparent duty of police to protect civilians and military responses to war. This fusion has had life-costing implications for Americans, specifically black, Muslim and Arab people.”
-->This story was left out of The NY Times, which does everything it can to make apartheid Israel look good to the American people.
