The media’s dereliction of duty in the Jena 6 case

By now we are all familiar with the mainstream media’s penchant for sloppy, sometimes non-existent factchecking, in addition to their exaggerations and lies (some of them deliberate), which all lead to news reports that – instead of informing the people as they are supposed to, grossly misinform the reader which, in turn, leads to mininformation being spread across the country (and world) as “fact” – and at that point, a popular myth is born, a myth that rarely gets revisited by the very journalists who aided in creating it in the first place. And even in the rare cases they do revisit, it’s usually too late. The damage has already been done.

This lack of standard has once again been exemplified by the Jena 6 case, a racially-charged case that has the usual suspects parading before the cameras demanding “justice” and blaming the white man for all the ills of the world, and so on. Craig Franklin of the Christian Science Monitor busts many of the myths that have been presumed by the public to be “facts” on the Jena 6 case. He writes:

The real story of Jena and the Jena 6 is quite different from what the national media presented. It’s time to set the record straight.

Myth 1: The Whites-Only Tree. There has never been a “whites-only” tree at Jena High School. Students of all races sat underneath this tree. When a student asked during an assembly at the start of school last year if anyone could sit under the tree, it evoked laughter from everyone present Γ’β‚¬β€œ blacks and whites. As reported by students in the assembly, the question was asked to make a joke and to drag out the assembly and avoid class.

Myth 2: Nooses a Signal to Black Students. An investigation by school officials, police, and an FBI agent revealed the true motivation behind the placing of two nooses in the tree the day after the assembly. According to the expulsion committee, the crudely constructed nooses were not aimed at black students. Instead, they were understood to be a prank by three white students aimed at their fellow white friends, members of the school rodeo team. (The students apparently got the idea from watching episodes of “Lonesome Dove.”) The committee further concluded that the three young teens had no knowledge that nooses symbolize the terrible legacy of the lynchings of countless blacks in American history. When informed of this history by school officials, they became visibly remorseful because they had many black friends. Another myth concerns their punishment, which was not a three-day suspension, but rather nine days at an alternative facility followed by two weeks of in-school suspension, Saturday detentions, attendance at Discipline Court, and evaluation by licensed mental-health professionals. The students who hung the nooses have not publicly come forward to give their version of events.

Myth 3: Nooses Were a Hate Crime. Although many believe the three white students should have been prosecuted for a hate crime for hanging the nooses, the incident did not meet the legal criteria for a federal hate crime. It also did not meet the standard for Louisiana’s hate-crime statute, and though widely condemned by all officials, there was no crime to charge the youths with.

Myth 4: DA’s Threat to Black Students. When District Attorney Reed Walters spoke to Jena High students at an assembly in September, he did not tell black students that he could make their life miserable with “the stroke of a pen.” Instead, according to Walters, “two or three girls, white girls, were chit-chatting on their cellphones or playing with their cellphones right in the middle of my dissertation. I got a little irritated at them and said, ‘Pay attention to me. I am right now having to deal with an aggravated rape case where I’ve got to decide whether the death penalty applies or not.’ I said, ‘Look, I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. With the stroke of a pen I can make your life miserable so I want you to call me before you do something stupid.'”

Read the whole thing. It’s three pages, but well worth it if you want to find out what’s really going on in Jena, and not just what the MSM is spoonfeeding readers.

Captain Ed writes in response:

All of these could easily have been discovered by the professionals in the national media. Franklin references official reports in each of these refutations of Jena mythology, as well as other specific points. The layers of fact-checkers and editors found in the mainstream media apparently couldn’t be bothered to research the assumptions made by the demagogues. Instead of using the facts to defuse a controversy fueled by misunderstanding, the media inflamed a nation by amplifying a series of exaggerations and outright lies.

Unfortunately, this revelation comes too late for the town of Jena, which has been vilified for bigotry that it never displayed. It might be that the Jena incident displays another kind of bigotry, one that afflicts urban and Northern writers about their rural and exurban Southern neighbors. The media apparently shares this bigotry, as shown in their impulse to accept the premise of the Jena mythology instead of actually reporting the facts. (via Power Line)

Yep. Again, we see the media constructing and reshaping a narrative based on their preconceived notions, just as we saw in the Duke Lacrosse rape case drama.

Same crap, different day, unfortunately.

Update: Greg Pollowitz at NRO’s Media Blog has more interesting facts about the Jena 6 case that you won’t hear much – if anything – about from the MSM.

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