A Times Reporter reveals what Conservatives all know about the LSM

The Crown Heights riots in New York of August 1991 which was instigated by Al Sharpton was reported in the New York Times and the rest of the media pretty much the same way they cover the news today; a refusal to report anything negative against the left.

For most of you following the media’s bias the following no longer comes as a surprise.

Twenty years after the riots former Times reporter Ari Goldman wrote a personal narrative in The Jewish Week about the cover-up and distortions of the New York Times at that time.

Twenty years ago next week, on the night of Aug. 19, 1991 — the night that Gavin Cato and Yankel Rosenbaum were killed — my editor called me at home to tell me that riots had broken out on the streets of Crown Heights. “We’re covered for tonight but I want you to start your day there tomorrow,” he said.

Over the next three days, working 12 hours shifts and only going home to sleep, I saw and heard many terrible things. I saw police cars set on fire, stores being looted and people bloodied by Billy clubs, rocks and bottles. One woman told me that she barricaded herself into her apartment and put the mattresses on the windows so her children would not be hurt by flying glass.

Over those three days I also saw journalism go terribly wrong. The city’s newspapers, so dedicated to telling both sides of the story in the name of objectivity and balance, often missed what was really going on. Journalists initially framed the story as a “racial” conflict and failed to see the anti-Semitism inherent in the riots. As the 20th anniversary of the riots approaches, I find myself re-examining my own role in the coverage and trying to extract some lessons for myself and my profession.

At the time, I was a religion writer at The New York Times and was well connected in the Lubavitch community, the predominant Jewish group in Crown Heights. I was one of probably a dozen Times reporters and photographers on the streets over the course of the riots. We were a diverse group, representing many religions and racial backgrounds.

My job was to file memos to the main “rewrite” reporters back in the Times office in Manhattan about what I saw and heard. We had no laptops or cellphones in those days so the other reporters and I went to payphones and dictated our memos to a waiting band of stenographers in the home office. The photographers handed their film off to couriers on motorcycles who took the film to the Times.

Yet, when I picked up the paper, the article I read was not the story I had reported. I saw headlines that described the riots in terms solely of race. “Two Deaths Ignite Racial Clash in Tense Brooklyn Neighborhood,” the Times headline said. And, worse, I read an opening paragraph, what journalists call a “lead,” that was simply untrue:

“Hasidim and blacks clashed in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn through the day and into the night yesterday.”

In all my reporting during the riots I never saw — or heard of — any violence by Jews against blacks. But the Times was dedicated to this version of events: blacks and Jews clashing amid racial tensions. To show Jewish culpability in the riots, the paper even ran a picture — laughable even at the time — of a chasidic man brandishing an open umbrella before a police officer in riot gear. The caption read: “A police officer scuffling with a Hasidic man yesterday on President Street.”

I was outraged but I held my tongue. I was a loyal Times employee and deferred to my editors. I figured that other reporters on the streets were witnessing parts of the story I was not seeing.

But then I reached my breaking point. On Aug. 21, as I stood in a group of chasidic men in front of the Lubavitch headquarters, a group of demonstrators were coming down Eastern Parkway. “Heil Hitler,” they chanted. “Death to the Jews.”

Police in riot gear stood nearby but did nothing.

Suddenly rocks and bottles started to fly toward us and a chasidic man just a few feet away from me was hit in the throat and fell to the ground. Some ran to help the injured man but most of us ran for cover. I ran for a payphone and, my hands shaking with rage, dialed my editor. I spoke in a way that I never had before or since when talking to a boss.

“You don’t know what’s happening here!” I yelled. “I am on the streets getting attacked. Someone next to me just got hit. I am writing memos and what comes out in the paper? ‘Hasidim and blacks clashed’? That’s not what is happening here. Jews are being attacked! You’ve got this story all wrong. All wrong.”

I didn’t blame the “rewrite” reporter. I blamed the editors. It was clear that they had settled on a “frame” for the story. The way they saw it, there were two narratives here: the white narrative and the black narrative. And both had equal weight.

After my outburst things got a little better. The next day’s report began like this: “Black youths hurling rocks and bottles scuffled with the police in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn last night, even as Mayor David N. Dinkins tried to personally calm the racially troubled neighborhood after two nights of violence.”

But the Times still had trouble changing its frame. Perhaps most troubling was an article written in the midst of the rioting under this headline: “Amid Distrust in Brooklyn: Boy and Scholar Fall Victim.” The article compared the life of Gavin Cato, the 7-year-old boy killed in the car accident that spurred the riots, and the life of Yankel Rosenbaum, 29, who was stabbed to death later that night. It recycled every newspaper cliché and was an insult to the memory of both victims, but, again, it fit the frame.

“They did not know each other,” the article said. “They had no reason to know… They died unaware….” In the eyes of the Times, the deaths were morally equivalent and had equal weight.

The Times editorial page followed suit. “The violence following an auto accident in Crown Heights reminds all New Yorkers that the city’s race relations remains dangerously strained,” the editorial said. It concluded by praising Mayor Dinkins, giving him credit “for a hard night’s work” and doing “the job that New Yorkers elected him to do.”

The one who first broke the frame and spoke the truth was the fearless poet of the New York newspaper business in those days, Jimmy Breslin, then a columnist for Newsday. He was one of numerous reporters, photographers and television journalists who were beaten or otherwise injured during the riots. In Breslin’s case, he was dragged from a taxi by a group of rampaging young men, pummeled and stripped of his clothes. That night, he vowed to tell the truth of his humiliation, although he anticipated the resistance. “And someone up in the higher echelons of journalism, some moron starts talking about balanced coverage,” he said.

The other person who spoke the truth was the brilliant former executive editor of the Times, A.M. Rosenthal, who by 1991 had become a columnist for the paper. Rosenthal was one of the first journalists at the Times to call the riots what they were. “Pogrom in Brooklyn,” was the headline of his column on Sept. 3, 1991, just two weeks after the riots ended.

“The press,” Rosenthal wrote, “treats it all as some kind of cultural clash between a poverty-ridden people fed up with life and a powerful, prosperous and unfortunately peculiar bunch of stuck-up neighbors — very sad of course, but certainly understandable. No — it is an anti-Semitic pogrom and the words should not be left unsaid.”

It pains me to recall that not many people at the Times took Rosenthal seriously at the time. He had gone from being the editor of a great “liberal” newspaper to being a “conservative” columnist who seemed to return to the same issues over and over again: the security of Israel, anti-Semitism, the persecution of Christians in China and the war on drugs.

But Rosenthal was right about Crown Heights. In 1993, two years after the Crown Heights riots, an exhaustive state investigation sharply criticized Mayor Dinkins for not understanding the severity of the crisis. It also faulted his police commissioner, Lee Brown, for mismanaging the police during the riots.

The critical state report was widely covered in the press. “For the Mayor,” the Times headline said, “A Harsh Light.”

But another report, this one on how the press covered Crown Heights, got little publicity. It was written in 1999 by Carol B. Conaway, then an assistant professor at the College of Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., and published in an academic journal called Polity. Her article is called “Crown Heights: Politics and Press Coverage of the Race War That Wasn’t.”

“Journalists and their audience alike rely on ‘frames’ when writing about and understanding newsworthy events because they provide cues for understanding others’ experiences,” Conaway wrote. But, she added, sometimes the frames are wrong.

She continued: “The New York Post, a tabloid, shifted away from the race frame to focus on black anti-Semitism within a few days of the initial rampages, while the New York Times persisted with the racial frame for at least two years.

“Yet,” she added, “one cannot understand the events [that unfolded in Crown Heights] without getting beyond the binaries of black versus white encouraged by the use of the race frame, and understanding the more complex dynamics of the conflict.”

As someone who saw the conflict unfold I can attest to this first-hand. I am telling my story in print for the first time because it is important that we journalists examine our mistakes and learn from them. Fitting stories into frames — whether about blacks and Jews, liberals or conservatives, Arabs and Israelis, Catholics and Protestants or Muslims and Jews — is wrong and even dangerous. Life is more complicated than that. And so is journalism.

NY-9: Do you really need David Weprin who used swastikas against his opponent and dumped his religious values to promote himself?

David Weprin has been announced as the Democratic candidate for Anthony Weiner’s seat in the special elections this September. NY-9 includes parts of Queens and Brooklyn, which has a large Jewish population, so the Democrats hope that a Jewish candidate will be able to coast to victory.

Weprin ran last year for Assembly in a special election against another Jew, Bob Friedrich, who received the Republican nomination and championed for conservative values. 

Front of the mailing Weprin sent to Jewish residents

Several days before the election, Weprin sent out a mailing to an area with a mostly Jewish population in which the image of a swastika was photo-shopped onto a crime scene, and accused Friedrich as “Extreme” because he “Doesn’t Think Hate Crimes Deserve Special Punishment.” With the use of the swastika, Weprin attacked Friedrich in a calculated manner, targeting Friedrich’s Jewishness and the Jewishness of the voters to prove his opponent’s supposed nonchalance towards hate crimes. 

The mailing was also sent to Friedrich's house

In truth, Friedrich had said that “all crimes are hate crimes” for whenever a crime is committed there is hatred in the criminal. The decision to label certain hates as eligible for harsher punishments results in leniency for all other hate-based crimes such as hate towards females, towards rich, or towards anything else. Friedrich also argued that “murder comes before hate crime” which is common sense! If one guy punches another person in the face and yells racial slurs while a different guy kills someone without a single word uttered, which one deserves a harsher sentence? 

And if two guys assault two different people, one yelling racial slurs while the other remains silent, why should the sentences be different for the same crime? If assaulting someone is a crime, then any individual who assaults any other individual should be dealt with equal severity, no matter what he does or doesn’t yell. In supporting harsher sentencing for so-called hate crimes, one is actually supporting leniency for so-called regular crimes.

Hate crimes were actually invented by liberals in order to provide additional protection to certain groups whose votes are necessary for the left to win an election. Liberals are actually known to be soft on criminals, as seen in their opposition to the death sentence.

Last year, when Weprin ran for Assembly, he was interviewed by many prominent Jewish newspapers in which he prided himself as a religious Jew who respects and values the Jewish traditions thereby receiving a large percentage of the Jewish voters

However, just a few weeks ago Weprin voted in the NY Assembly to legalize same-sex marriage, which is contrary to and forbidden according to Jewish law and which religious Jews have protested against. Weprin’s vote in support of the bill now exposed him as a JINO – a Jew In Name Only. As a religious Jewish New Yorker myself, although not in his district, I was appalled at his vote for and support of the gay marriage bill. . The editor of the Hamodia expressed his surprise and shock at Weprin’s false self-portrayal last year, just as Stupak has done to voters in Michigan regarding abortion.

Before the vote took place he actually encouraged others to vote for it and prided himself in voting “yes” even though he’s Jewish. He may be Jewish, but obviously has no respect for the Jewish religion or its people. He then has the gall to claim he respects Judaism while promoting that which it forbids! Additionally, Weprin supports Roe vs. Wade which is also contrary to Jewish law.

Weprin defended his vote on same-sex marriage by referring to it a “civil right issue”, and that it didn’t mandate his Rabbi or others to actually perform such marriages and is therefore unrelated to religion.

How dare he compare it to the backbreaking labor slaves were enforced to endure in the bitter cold and scorching heat day in and day out? How does voting against the legalization of gay marriage compare to forbidding individuals to eat in a restaurant, take their kids to a park, or ride a bus only because of the color of their skin?

Oh, of course the law doesn’t mandate anything, one just got to wait until a Pastor or Rabbi refuses to officiate a gay wedding and is then takes to court for discriminatory charges.

Unfortunately, the Conservative movement is minimal in New York and hasn’t done much last year to fight back to Weprin’s outrageous attacks, or educate the voters especially within the Jewish community the truth regarding Weprin. The district is ranked as +5 Democrat which makes it the second most conservative district of New York. Although most residents share the Conservative ideology specifically regarding foreign affairs and social issues, many are not registered voters, while a considerable percentage that are registered don’t bother voting, because it’s liberal New York and they don’t believe their votes could possibly make a difference.

It is therefore necessary to educate the constituents of the NY-9th district and the rest of New York about the truth of their candidates and elected officials, such as Weprin’s support for the extension of the millionaires’ tax which negatively affects the state’s economy, an increase on cigarettes tax, as well as his pro-abortion stance which is contrary to Jewish law. Voters must be told not to despair but to unite and fight the politicians who don’t represent the community and the people’s interest, economically, socially, or otherwise.

Fortunately, the Republican Party has nominated an articulate conservative, Bob Turner, to challenge Weprin. Bob Turner is a staunch pro-lifer who promises to fight for federal spending cuts and tax cuts in order to get the economy rolling once again. He’s a retired successful business owner who ran in 2010 against the then popular incumbent, Weiner, because no one else was willing to take Weiner up on his record, and received about 40% of the votes.

Weiner is the second New York representative this year who’s been forced to resign because of immoral conduct, and it’s time for New Yorkers to recognize that they deserve better Representatives who respect their position and share the values of the people At a time when the citizens are disgusted and ashamed with their representatives it is prudent to do all one can to support Bob Turner through donations, volunteering, and spreading the word so that a conservative like Turner should have the ability to fight the Democratic machine and emerge victorious in the special elections this September.



       

The Indictment and Conviction of David Prosser by the Media

The media has long abandoned all pretenses of being an agency solely with the intention of reporting the news. They interpret the news for you according to their wishes and choose what and how to report based on its conformation to the leftist ideology.

The media has taken on a new role in addition to all that; not satisfied that they can’t control all politicians and decisions in this country, they’ve appointed themselves as prosecutors, lawyers, witnesses, jurors, and judges all in one who place judgment on individuals facing charges before facing trial.

The media’s actions and reactions to Judge Bradley’s claim about Judge David Prosser are a disgrace and blemish to journalism. Sadly, this is not a one-time occurrence. As a New Yorker, the following two stories highlight the media’s judgmental stance.

Forty four people were arrested in a sting operation across New York and New Jersey two summers ago including politicians, mayors, Rabbis, and regular citizens with charges of assorted white-collar crimes including money laundering, accepting bribery, and accepting illegal campaign contributions amongst others. The only relation between the arrestees that they all were connived into the illegal activity by the same individual, an F.B.I. informant who had swindled out of a bank millions of dollars and was promised a lighter sentence through acting as an informer.

The morning following the arrest, the media in the entire tri-state area and beyond launched nasty attacks against those arrested before they were been found guilty of any crime. The fact that they’ve been duped by an informed was irrelevant and mentioned in passing.

In a separate incident in Riverdale, New York two months before the above arrests, four Muslims were arrested and charged for plotting to blow up synagogues and military aircraft in Riverdale, New York. Their contact, whom they believed to be from Al Qaeda, and helped them with the planning the terrorist attacks and the procuring of proper weapons, was an F.B.I. plant. They had planted the bombs near the synagogues and were heading with a stinger to shoot down a military aircraft (all of which unknown to them were fakes) when the F.B.I. closed down on them and arrested them

The media reacted by reporting the story as an “alleged plot” in which they questioned the arrests because the arrestees were ensnared into the entire plot by the instigator. Even after they had been found guilty by jury and judge, the media continued to fight to absolve them from any wrongdoing and attacked the F.B.I. for its use of an infiltrator as seen here, here, here, here, and here.

I was shocked at the media’s callous attitude towards the four radicals and my outrage grew to greater extremes when their reactions two months later after the New Jersey arrests were entirely different. These three Muslim men were ready to blow up and kill innocent civilians, yet the media was careful to refer to the “alleged plot and harped on the F.B.I. agent’s role while at the next story, didn’t find it necessary to give any of the arrestees the benefit of doubt or focus on the informer’s role. If an Al Qaeda cell in the U.S. would’ve contacted these three Muslims, as they thought was the case, and provided them with the proper aid, the result would’ve been horrific. Despite all this, they were on the receiving end of sympathy from the media.

On the other hand, the charges against the forty four individuals were for money laundering, accepting bribes, organ trafficking, corruption etc. -- white collar criminal charges of different levels which the people too have convinced into committing by a former criminal, and some of which were later acquitted or thrown out. Even those found guilty never came close to harming another individual, but the media felt it as their duty to pronounce them guilty while defending those persuaded to cause death and destruction.

These are not isolated incidents, but occur daily. The media’s response to the radicals mirrored their reaction to the three brothers who were accused and sentenced for plotting a killing spree at Fort Dix, a military base located in New Jersey.

I’m not defending any crime, violent or otherwise. The fact that the media plays judge is in itself astonishing. Their skewed judgment is the shock upon the astonishment. Their verdicts are seen daily in newspapers to the point that many no longer realize how un-journalistic it is and that it goes against the belief of innocent until proven guilty.

It’s interesting to note that often after the court has passed judgment on an individual, the media has no qualms coming to the defense of criminals who have been proven guilty of murder or other crimes after lengthy court cases in which witnesses and/or other sufficient evidence has been provided that earn the criminal the death penalty. Suddenly the media’s hearts bleed with compassion for the “poor” killer and criticize the judgment of the judicial system.

How can the media at times pounce upon an individual or group of people accused of crime, oftentimes petty, and declare them guilty without a proper trial or evidence, and at other instances criticize the sentence of a jury or judge which is based on hard facts as too harsh or as accusing someone who’s innocent?

The above incidents which highlight the media’s conflicting reactions to criminal accusations explain the media’s treatment of the accusations against Strauss-Kahn and Prosser.

Strauss-Kahn was arrested about two months ago because a hotel maid accused him of rape. The media pounced upon the claim and passed their verdict of guilty accepting the point of view of the hotel maid against his. He’s a socialist who I disagree with on every issue, but what happened to innocent until proven guilty? Why is the media so desperate to destroy people before a verdict has been passed? Recently it has been reported that the prosecutors are dropping the case because of conflicting reports from the hotel maid, according to police investigators.

The other accusation is against a Conservative Supreme Court judge who recently ran for reelection against the entire liberal machine who was desperate to unseat him because of his support for Governor Walker’s union reforms which the left were trying to block. The left viciously attacked him with false smears and ads such as that he’s supported sex offenders rather than rape victims, a claim which the rape victim denounced as false and twisted. After a tough battle in which he fought against many hateful lies, he overcame the left and the media, and won the reelection.

Several weeks ago the bill that stripped the collective bargaining rights from unions was ruled as constitutional and legal by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin thanks to the conservative vote of the aforementioned victorious judge, Judge David Prosser.

About a week later, one of the liberal judges went to the press and accused him of holding her in a “choke-hold,” and the media pounced upon their former prey with a new passion.

Here’s an excerpt of Schneider on NRO which provides details of the incident:

The week before the legislature was set to re-pass the collective-bargaining provision, three of the four conservative justices were ready to issue a ruling reinstating the union law as originally passed. Prosser, on the other hand, wanted to wait longer, to avoid the appearance that the court was rushing their decision through. Prosser thought he had an agreement with liberal Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson to delay release of the opinion until Tuesday of the following week.

As Monday arrived, there was no word from Abrahamson on whether the decision would be issued the next day. At 5:30 p.m., Prosser and the other conservative justices marched around the chambers, looking for Abrahamson, who was found in Justice Bradley’s office. Prosser stood outside Bradley’s door, talking to the justices in Bradley’s office. The discussion got heated, with Prosser expressing his lack of faith in Abrahamson’s ability to lead the Court.

According to one witness, Bradley charged toward Prosser, shaking her clenched fist in his face. Another source says they were “literally nose to nose.” Prosser then put his hands up to push her away. As one source pointed out, if a man wants to push a woman who is facing him, he wouldn’t push her in the chest (unless he wants to face an entirely different criminal charge). Consequently, Prosser put his hands on Bradley’s shoulders to push her away, and in doing so, made contact with her neck.

At that moment, another justice approached Bradley from behind and pulled her away from Prosser, saying, “Stop it, Ann, this isn’t like you.” Bradley then shouted, “I was choked!” Another justice present replied, “You were not choked.” In a statement following the incident, Bradley maintained Prosser “put his hands around my neck in anger in a chokehold.”

On Monday night, Bradley called Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs to talk to him about the incident. On the morning of Wednesday, June 15, Tubbs joined the justices in a closed-door meeting, where he discussed “issues relating to workplace violence.”

During the meeting, Chief Justice Abrahamson actually reenacted the incident on Chief Tubbs — no doubt an amusing sight, as the diminutive Abrahamson mimicked choking the tall, portly police chief. During her demonstration, Abrahamson emphasized that Prosser had exerted “pressure” on Bradley’s throat.

“There was no pressure,” interrupted the justice who had initially broken up the incident between Bradley and Prosser. “That’s only because you broke us apart,” shot back Bradley. This exchange led several meeting attendees to believe Bradley was making up the charge, as they took her rejoinder as an admission that there was no pressure applied to her neck.

Althouse had a prudent point about Bradley’s response:

Indeed, if we believe Bradley said "That’s only because you broke us apart" when someone pulled her back from behind, it would seem that the "pressure" that would have occurred but didn't would have been the result of her forward movement toward Prosser. That's the evidence a criminal defense lawyer would milk if there were an actual trial here.

Bradley didn’t end up pressing charges and instead turned to the media the following week. The media scooped up her story and portrayed Prosser as a bully with an uncontrollable temper and not deserving of his judicial seat even though it appears Bradley’s made contradictory statements. They all sided with Bradley’s version of being held in a “chokehold” rather than reporting both sides of the story and allowing the public to form their own opinion.

About a week later, a Fox news reporter (which the media claims is a rightwing network when all they have is a few right commentators and a majority of mainstream reporters) ran after David Prosser repeatedly badgering him with questions until Prosser and pushing the mike in Prosser’s face. Prosser attempted to push it aside and when the reporter persisted, he took the mike out of the reporter’s hand and then handed it back. Of course, when the video hit the blogosphere, the left condemned him and used it as “proof” and “hard evidence” of his “violence” in the courthouse. Most conservatives continued to defend him but questioned his judgment for pulling out the mike which gave him a terrible PR at a time when he’s being blamed for attacking a fellow judge.

I don’t know if I lost my mind, or it’s others that lost their mind, but why do people have such a hard time understanding another human being? Here’s a person who’s being blamed for choking someone, which if found guilty can land him time in jail, and although it’s her word against his, the entire media has declared him guilty. This same individual has just finished his reelection campaign in which the media and the left falsely accused him of supporting rape acts amongst other hateful in an attempt to destroy him only because of his belief that a certain law is constitutional and legal. After winning the election and passing judgment on the law, the left is set to destroy him no matter what. No one but these judges know what truly occurred, but if Bradley said by the reenactment that there was no pressure because they were broken apart, and the police officer was there as witness, then this seems very likely as simply another attempt to tarnish a man’s reputation and destroy his career. 

Is it so difficult to understand the emotions and pressure of an individual who’s been branded guilty by the entire media without any evidence, that his reaction to the press was the refusal to answer questions and the removal of a mike? Why should he trust the media?

When a college student questioned Bob Etheridge, the former Democrat congressman from North Carolina, whether he supports Obama’s policies, Etheridge attacked and choked the student, as captured on video. The media’s reaction was to sweep the video under the carpet and not even show it to the public! Suddenly, the media is disturbed by claims of choking?

The media is a hypocritical institution which has long abandoned the original principles of journalism and became an extended arm of the Democratic political machine. Rather than reporting the news, they choose to skip some, stress others, indict the right, and acquit the left. It’s time for the media to take upon themselves one more change, a change of name.