Better late than never.
The "Black Lives Matter" rallying phrase, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” was one of the biggest lies told this year, according to the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, in his annual end-of-the-year fact-checker.
The ubiquitous phrase spread shortly after the death of Michael Brown on Aug. 9, 2014. When a few false, unsubstantiated claims by “witnesses” declared that Brown had raised his hands and said, “Don’t shoot” before he was shot to death by Officer Darren Wilson, the media took those reports and ran with them. The lie made its way, unchallenged by the media, to rallies and protests nationwide, football games, television shows, Hollywood award ceremonies and even Congress.
Seven months later, in early March of 2015, the DOJ finished its investigation into the shooting and released a report confirming that No, that actually never happened. But before that came out, the damage had already been done by the media. That one lie had helped fuel race-based riots nationwide and burned Ferguson to the ground.
The speed of which the lie spread was due in no small part to the media’s reluctance to investigate reports or call it a lie. In fact, the three networks let the phrase crop up in their reporting, unchallenged 140 times before the DOJ report was released. A year after Brown’s death, that number jumped to 157 mentions of the phrase on network news.
To the newspaper’s credit, the Post’s Michelle Ye Hee Lee initially gave the phrase “four pinocchios” (a rating reserved for blatant lies) back in March, roughly two weeks after the DOJ released their report.
As one of the first outlets to admit that the phrase was false, the Washington Post should be commended for exposing this blatant and harmful lie, unlike the networks.
