OPINION

Race and Media Bias

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

This past week Fox News regular contributor Juan Williams penned a column on the Ferguson situation questioning where the black leadership was.When I was reading through his column one particular comment written by Williams jumped off the page at me.In his column he wrote, “Incredibly, the best leadership on the scene has come from the family of the murdered teen”.

My question to Juan Williams is, what “murdered” teen ?There was no teenager murdered as a result of the police shooting in Ferguson that I’m aware of.There indeed was a black teenager who lost his life while attacking a police officer.An officer who had to use deadly force against this attacker in order to defend himself and save his own life.But no “murder” occurred.

What Juan Williams did was either purposefully done to send a message to the reader that Williams belonged to the group of ‘true believers’ who are convinced despite the fairly significant amount of evidence that points towards a justified use of deadly force by the officer, that indeed an injustice had been perpetrated against an innocent black teenager.

Or he needs to better edit his columns before they go to publication.I have that issue at times, but I don’t really think that’s the case here.I think Juan Williams was sending a message regarding his true point of view about the Michael Brown incident.

Certainly he’s entitled to express his opinion, just as I have done on this subject through a number of my own writings in recent weeks.But I don’t think I’ve been subtle or have tried to send a subliminal message at all in expressing my opinion on this case.

I’ve been up front and have openly expressed the opinion that while the death of a teenager at any time is a tragedy, it is especially tragic when that death is a result of the teen’s own stupidity, poor judgment, or criminal activity. Or because he attacked a police officer.

But what Williams did isn’t anything new in the liberal media.It’s common for them to either misrepresent racial stories, distort or cover up facts, or decline to even identify race when the perpetrator of a particularly heinous crime happens to be black.But subtlety isn’t always employed, such as in the case of some news outlets like MSNBC who blatantly slant their reporting to present a very, very liberal bias.

The liberal media knows full well the statistics that clearly show black on white crime happens disproportionately more often than the other way around. And contrary to what some in the news media, as well as some Hollywood celebrities and other public figures would have you believe, black teens are not being gunned down on our nation’s streets by rogue police officers on a regular basis.

In fact, compared to the large numbers of violent crimes committed daily by young black males, relatively few have their lives come to an end at the hands of a police officer. Most of their lives are cut short by the end of a gun pointed at them by another young black male.

But these facts are rarely mentioned by liberal columnists or the so-called mainstream media organizations.It doesn’t fit the narrative they want to project to the people.That young black males are being gunned down by police officers on American streets far too often and for no reason.

Instead of reporting the facts that blacks steal from, rape, and murder many more white people than what is reported on the evening news, most of the time information about the race of black criminal suspects lays unused on the cutting room floor of most news media outlets.

Instead what is presented is the preferred narrative the liberal “mainstream media” want people to see, that young black males are being victimized by racist police and a racist society.

When the reality is far, far different.