Friday's CBS This Morning and NBC's Today both spotlighted the walk-out protest on Thursday of a group of congressional staffers, who gave the "hands up, don't shoot" gesture of the groups protesting the grand jury's decision in the Michael Brown case. NBC's Tamron Hall trumpeted the "powerful statement without words" on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. CBS's Jeff Glor noted that the participants "stood with their hands in the air." Neither morning show mentioned, however, that the pose forwards an inaccurate portrayal of the Brown shooting.
Michael Brown Shooting
St. Louis Reporter: Dorian Johnson, Now Hired by City As a Temp, 'Rose to Fame' in Michael Brown Saga
By Tom Blumer | December 10, 2014 | 11:41 PM EST St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Nick Pistor has quite an odd take on Dorian Johnson, the closest eyewitness to the killing of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson in early August.
The occasion enabling Pistor to publicly purvey his perception was news on Monday that Johnson had taken a job with the City of St. Louis. Before getting to those details, let's look at Pistor's astonishing opening paragraph (bolds are mine throughout this post):
By Randy Hall | December 4, 2014 | 8:24 PM EST
With the past weeks' lack of grand jury indictments regarding police officers who killed African-Americans in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City, it was only a matter of time before someone dredged up the old cliché that “a good prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich.”
It finally happened during the Thursday edition of MSNBC's Now with Alex Wagner, when Michael Steele, a black former chairman of the Republican National Committee, declared: “A black man's life is not worth a ham sandwich.”
By Curtis Houck | December 2, 2014 | 9:48 PM EST
Major broadcast networks CBS and NBC failed to cover the news that police in Missouri are looking into inflammatory comments made by Michael Brown’s stepfather in the aftermath of a grand jury’s announcement on November 24 that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson will not be charged in connection to Brown’s death.
Following the announcement of the decision, Louis Head stood surrounded by his wife and mother of Michael Brown and shouted multiple times at the large crowd gathered nearby to “burn this bitch down,” which was most likely in reference to the town of Ferguson. Later that night, widespread looting, vandalism, and burning of businesses and police cruisers all took place throughout the area.
By Randy Hall | December 2, 2014 | 7:48 PM EST
Now that the tumult over the decision by the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the death of black 18-year-old Michael Brown has begun to subside, the Washington Post and ABC News commissioned a poll to determine what people across the country think about the choice, and the survey resulted in some surprising numbers.
By a margin of 48 to 45 percent, this telephone poll conducted November 25-26 and 28-30 among a random national sample of 1,011 adults -- including users of both conventional and cellular phones – determined that more people approve of the grand jury's action than Barack Obama's handling of the situation.
By Matthew Balan | December 2, 2014 | 5:39 PM EST
On Monday's CNN Tonight, Don Lemon refreshingly pointed out a problematic component of the Ferguson protests. Former police officer David Klinger pointed out that "all the forensic evidence indicates that it wasn't [Michael] Brown with his hands up standing still. All the evidence indicates that he was coming back at Officer Wilson." Lemon replied to his guest by wondering, "So the question is, this 'hands up' rallying cry has – is it a false narrative that people are using to fit their own agenda?"
By Curtis Houck | December 2, 2014 | 12:33 AM EST
During a speech in Baltimore on Saturday, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan justified the violence that took place in Ferguson, Missouri in the aftermath of the grand jury decision and called on African-Americans to “die for something” and “tear this goddamn country up” as peaceful protests only benefit “white folks.” Since Farrakhan’s remarks at Morgan State University became public, the major broadcast networks have all ignored the story completely in both their respective morning and evening newscasts.
By Randy Hall | November 26, 2014 | 7:10 PM EST
During Wednesday's edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe program, Joe Scarborough asserted that if he behaved like 18-year-old Michael Brown did during the August 9 incident in Ferguson, Mo., a police officer would have reacted the same way Darren Wilson did even though the co-host is “a white guy.”
“There are two criminal justice systems in America,” Scarborough claimed at the start of the segment. “Black young men especially are not only treated worse on the street, they're treated worse in the court system, they're treated worse all the way through. What white kids get away with, black kids don't get away with.”
By Clay Waters | November 25, 2014 | 10:57 PM EST
New York Times reporters covered in (mostly) fair fashion the grand jury announcement from Ferguson, Mo. announcing that no charges would be brought against the white police officer who shot black teenager Michael Brown. But a racially charged profile of Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon's response was so hostile, you'd think he was a Republican.
By Matthew Balan | November 25, 2014 | 7:00 PM EST
Two CNN anchors channeled the supporters of Michael Brown's family on Tuesday's Early Start, as they played up how St. Louis County, Missouri Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch presented the Brown case to a grand jury, instead of pursuing charges himself. Chris Cuomo pointed out that "the prosecutor could still bring charges even after the grand jury." Deborah Feyerick later forwarded her colleague's point: "Could the prosecutor...basically, overrule the grand jury and say, charges should be filed?"
By Matthew Balan | November 25, 2014 | 3:50 PM EST
Rudy Giuliani fired back at Michael Eric Dyson on CNN's New Day on Tuesday for the MSNBC analyst's "white supremacy" attack on the former New York City mayor. When anchor Alisyn Camerota raised Giuliani's supposedly "controversial comments" from Sunday's Meet the Press on NBC, the former Republican politician underlined that he had "said the same thing the President of the United States said, and I was accused of being a racist."
By Curtis Houck | October 22, 2014 | 10:15 PM EDT
On Wednesday, the results of the St. Louis County autopsy of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who died after being shot by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, were leaked to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper and largely supports Wilson’s claims that he had a physical altercation with Brown inside his police SUV.
When it came to the major broadcast networks offering any mention of this big development, CBS and NBC failed to cover the story on both their morning and evening newscasts, respectively.