It was only a matter of days before police shooting victim Jacob Blake, shot seven times on Sunday night, would be criminalized by mainstream media. So the New York Post's midweek headline saying Blake had a knife in his car was perfectly in tandem with the media's criminalization of Black victims.
Amid a nation in peril, Blake's shooting wasn't the only devastation we'd see this week. Just three days after Blake's shooting, a white teen, Kyle Rittenhouse, fatally shot two people protesting Blake's killing and injured another as Blavity previously reported. This offered no greater time for outlets like The Post to showcase their flare for racial bias.
Rittenhouse is a Trump supporter who showed up to a Tuesday night Wisconsin protest over the shooting of Blake, a Black 29-year-old father.
When Trump glorifies one, we inevitably get the other.
— Sen. Mike Gianaris (@SenGianaris) August 26, 2020
If you don’t see how uplifting the McCloskeys emboldens people like Kyle Rittenhouse then you’re not paying attention. pic.twitter.com/lwpPRPYjAo
He said he'd shown up to the demonstration to "protect" businesses and wildly enough, people. After shooting three protesters, he ran down the street, passing police officers, exclaiming what he'd done.
This is Jacob Blake. His fiancé shared these photos with us. He’s 29 and a father of three. His fiancé says he is a security guard. pic.twitter.com/IxaK9DUaYc
— Stephanie Haines (@TMJ4Stephanie) August 24, 2020
Within hours of each other, the Post ran two stories on Wednesday evening: one alleging Blake, a victim, had a knife in his car when he was shot in the back by police and the other showcasing Rittenhouse, a perpetrator, cleaning up graffiti before killing people. Screenshots of the stories intended to illustrate the clear bias went viral on Twitter.
from Blavity News https://ift.tt/3lsYlSr
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