https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/us/jacob-blake-kenosha-fires.html
Read the NYT headline and the article and then see if you can detect the reporter’s point of view and that of the editor who, I assume, approved both the headline and the article:
“Fires in Kenosha Reflect Anger After Police Shooting of Jacob Blake.”
Allow me to voice a suspicion, and by that I mean that I don’t know for sure that this is the case but I believe it probably is. I suspect that the powers that be at the New York Times do not disapprove of such riots. Instead, they “understand” them. They “appreciate” the motivation behind them. They “empathize” with the the people who set buildings on fire to show their opposition to the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
Imagine how the headline might read if a bunch of white, evangelical, anti-abortion activists had set fire to a D.C. abortion clinic following the announcement of another pro-abortion Supreme Court ruling. I strongly doubt that the NYT headline would read “Fires in Washington Reflect Anger After Pro-Abortion Ruling.” Why not? Because that reads very much like a justification for setting fires, and there’s no way in hell that the Times would ever try to justify burning down an abortion clinic. But burning “a mattress store, a storefront church, a Mexican restaurant and a cellphone store” – all of which really happened in Kenosha, WI, according to the article – becomes understandable, maybe even acceptable, because it is an expression of anger that the Times writer and the Times editorial board are in sympathy with.
Notice the matter-of-fact way in which Julie Bosman, the reporter, tells us that “One resident said he had little problem with burning businesses to spur social change and reform to policing. ‘It’s unfortunate, but it has to be done,’ said Wayne Gardner, who lives around the corner."
IT HAS TO BE DONE??? Burning down a church and a restaurant has to be done?
