Buried within the news, is the news. Longish rant.

[Locut0s]

I was just reading a front page CNN article on the alarming homicide rate in Chicago this past year:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/02/us/chicago-murder-rate-2016-visual-guide/index.html

We all know the failure of the mainstream media to properly report the news. News is now mostly "infotainment", startlingly near sighted and phenomenally lacking in depth. More often than not the latest celebrity death holds the front page for as much or more time than news of terrorist attacks or over seas conflicts, when they even bother to report on those. And when it comes to stories they DO report they usually cherry pick the most sensationalist stuff, what will get them the ratings. With Trump this has meant mostly focusing on his Twitter account at the expense of the rest of the GOP. I should note that I'm talking about the mainstream media, TV, internet and print, from which the vast majority of the population receives their news (if they bother to), I realize there are still pockets of legitimate hard hitting journalism.

That being said sometimes they still do cover important stories. Sometimes they will still run a piece focusing on the phenomenal inequality in the world, the struggles faced by the poor, and social injustices. The story above does in some ways fall into this category. But I often find these pieces most galling of all because within them, just buried under the surface you can see the skeleton on the real story. In this case, as is often the case, they cover the main statistics, but there is a clear editorial bias to falsely "balance" the story, hide the truth by falsely talking up all sides of the argument so that in the end it seems a wash. You see this commonly done on pundit shows where they will bring on a black republican talking head as if to suggest that society is far more racially balanced and integrated than it is.

In this specific news story they hit on a few important truths. They mention the city's unemployment rate (check). They mention that despite Chicago's strict gun laws over 60% of guns used in crimes are bought out of state and shipped in from near by states with very lax gun laws (check). They briefly mention the city's racial segregation (check). I'm happy to see they mention the problem of racism within the police force, the people's mistrust of them, and that an independent panel found that they "have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color." (check). All excellent points and the backbone of the real story I suspect.

But then they have to muddy the waters as I mentioned. Make it look like it's all a wash. And this is where I get ANGRY because all it takes is a little Googling to pick apart this shit and pull up some ancillary numbers that point back at the real story. Chicago had 762 homicides last year BUT they mention not the highest per capita in the country referencing 5 other cities with higher per capita crime rates, but they fail to mention most of those listed cities have it turns out about 14% - 24% the population of Chicago. I realize of course that's why you mention per capita rates and not just raw numbers but total city size matters a LOT especially in terms of the cultural atmosphere of the city which plays into violent crime. (X) They of course touch on race as a predominant issue, it would be impossible not to, but fail to elucidate the gravity of the problem no where are the statistics that it looks like only 5% of the victims are white. Although the story is in the pictures they show of the race of the mourner's faces. Of course when really right wing media does mention those stats it's used disgustingly to show that the problem is just a "black on black" crime problem, a problem of "degenerates". (X) They mention the fact that many people blame the city's unemployment rate but within the same sentence mention that it "fell from 6.1% in 2015 to 5.5% in 2016". A few seconds of Googling shows that the black unemployment rate between the ages of 20 and 24 in the city is ABOVE 50%! (X) In the same breath in which they talk about the distrust of the police and its systemic racism they follow up with "However, officer-involved shootings are only a tiny portion of Chicago's homicide rate [...] Attacks on officers, according to the Chicago Police Department, nearly doubled in 2016". So we wash away that issue to, when right above is the startling sentence that a independent review panel found a &quot dis)regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color". (X) And while they correctly concentrate on the human element of the story they do so for the wrong reasons, ratings. They show black faces, mention black names, but startlingly lost in the conversation of course is just how desperate a situation the black community is in. The issues of systemic racism and poverty are just lurking under the surface of this story but not actually mentioned. Lost here is a huge opportunity to humanize the problem. They mention the sad tragedy of the individual loses, kids killed, etc, but by failing to address it as a problem of racism and pretending that it's kind of all a wash they play right back into said racism. One could almost walk away from reading this piece with the idea that no one really knows the root cause of the problem.

Failure to cover the real story, makes one complicit in the problems of the story you fail to cover. It becomes an act of unspoken approval of all the conspiracy theory nuts and wackos who pretend there is no story. In this specific case failure to scream at the top of your lungs RACISM, just skirting the issue, makes the story racist itself in its own omissions.

DO YOUR FUCKING JOB MEDIA!

[yallerdawg]

1. "60 Minutes" report Sunday.

Now we have to piece the story together.

But we were astonished by data we obtained from inside the police department. It revealed that as killings rose, police activity fell. In August of 2015, cops stopped and questioned 49,257 people. A year later those stops dropped to 8,859, down 80 percent. At the same time arrests were off by a third, from just over 10,000 to 6,900.

This crisis inside the police department began in 2014 with the shooting of Laquan McDonald. He was 17 years old. Police reported McDonald was breaking into vehicles and ignored their commands when they said he lunged at one of them with a knife. But dashboard video appears to show McDonald was moving away when he was shot 16 times by a white officer.

The cop who killed Laquan McDonald is awaiting trial for murder and the U.S. Justice department is investigating the Chicago PD. We wanted to talk to Mayor Emanuel, but he declined. Within six weeks of the shooting scandal, investigative stops fell by nearly 35,000. That’s when the violence began to surge.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-crisis-in-chicago-gun-violence/