Appearing on the November 24 edition of Hardball, MSNBC contributor Michelle Bernard called for the federal Justice Department to "get involved" in prosecuting Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson regardless of the outcome of the St. Louis County grand jury investigation. Bernard insisted that Brown was the latest "casualty" of a nationwide "war on black boys."
Michael Brown
By Matthew Balan | October 28, 2014 | 12:56 PM EDT
On Monday's Morning Joe, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough prompted hippie icon Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills, and Nash fame to promote his new song about the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Nash wildly contended that "what happened with...almost, the execution of Michael Brown, we had to say something." He also took a shot at a regular boogeyman for MSNBC: the Koch brothers.
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.
By Randy Hall | September 27, 2014 | 2:45 PM EDT
It looks like the Rev. Al Sharpton is taking Eric Holder's resignation pretty hard. Not only did the liberal activist praise him during Thursday's edition of the Politics Nation program as the first African-American to serve as attorney general, the host of the weekday MSNBC series called him the "best" one in history when it comes to civil rights.
In addition, the liberal activist noted in a statement that he and his civil rights organization -- the National Action Network -- "are engaged in immediate conversations with the White House on deliberations over a successor whom we hope will continue in the general direction” Holder established during his six years in office.
By Randy Hall | September 25, 2014 | 5:45 PM EDT
On Thursday morning, Thomas Jackson -- the chief of police for the city of Ferguson -- released a video in which he apologized for many things, including the death of Michael Brown, the African-American teenager who was shot and killed by white police officer Darren Wilson on August 9.
Later that day, Rev. Al Sharpton – host of the weekday afternoon PoliticsNation program on the MSNBC cable channel -- attacked the apology as “too little, too late.”
By Curtis Houck | September 24, 2014 | 8:59 PM EDT
During his speech to the United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly on Wednesday, President Barack Obama made a striking, unusual and ridiculous comparison between the reign of terror taking place in the Middle East at the hands of the brutal Islamic terrorist group ISIS and the unrest that took place in Ferguson, Missouri last month after the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
As far as the any of the major broadcast networks bringing up this absurd comparison on their evening newcasts, neither ABC, CBS, or NBC gave that portion of the President’s speech any attention or allowed it to see the light of day.
By Curtis Houck | September 23, 2014 | 12:19 AM EDT
Starting on Monday night, a series of town hall meetings in Ferguson, Missouri began taking place in light of the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in conjunction with the Department of Justice (DOJ) that will be closed to the media. When it came to the major broadcast networks reporting this censoring of the press, none of them chose to cover it.
According to an article posted on MSNBC’s website, an agency within the DOJ known as the Community Relations Service (CRS) has been “working behind the scenes to cool racial tensions in the city” by coming in and closing “the meetings to the media and non-residents.”
By Matthew Balan | September 12, 2014 | 1:32 PM EDT
PBS's Tavis Smiley shamelessly invoked Dr. Martin Luther King on Thursday's CNN Tonight, as he commented on the ongoing controversy surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown: "It underscores that Martin [Luther] King was right about what he called the 'triple threat' almost 50 years ago....He said what's threatening our very democracy is what he called the triple threat of racism, poverty, and militarism. What we saw in Ferguson was racism, poverty and militarism."
Leftists Who Trashed 'No Angel' Term In NY Times for Michael Brown Should Have Trashed Columnist Charles Blow?
By Tim Graham | August 28, 2014 | 7:00 AM EDT
The hypersensitive leftists who screamed in social media at The New York Times over using the term “no angel” to describe Michael Brown after he was shot dead in Ferguson ought to read Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple.
Wemple took the “no angel” term into a Nexis search of the Times archives and found that somehow black columnist Charles Blow wasn’t Twitter-harassed when he described convicted killer Clayton Lockett (also black) as “no angel,” underlining that the term can be a way of clearing the throat on the way to sympathy, a "yes, but" and not a vicious insult:
By Randy Hall | August 27, 2014 | 8:04 PM EDT
During Tuesday evening's edition of The Late Show with David Letterman on CBS, Rachel Maddow -- host of her own eponymous weeknight program on MSNBC – told the retiring host/comedian that the problems in Ferguson, Missouri, are the result of a number of intersecting conflicts.
People in the community feel “very unrepresented” in the government, she stated, which is in part due to the large disparity between the number of black citizens and local officials of the same race. Finally, Maddow claimed that Americans found it “terrifying” to see the type of military-style weaponry the small-town police department used to control demonstrators and protesters when incidents of unrest threatened to become dangerous riots.
By Jack Coleman | August 27, 2014 | 7:40 PM EDT
Among the things that conservative firebreather Rush Limbaugh deservedly loathes, it's sanctimony from an ostensibly neutral news anchor.
Gwen Ifill, moderator of "Washington Week" and co-anchor of "PBS NewsHour," was among the panelists who appeared on "Meet the Press" this past Sunday. The discussion inevitably turned to the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the civil unrest that followed. (Audio clips after the jump)
CBS’s Duthiers on Missouri State Law on Police Use of Force: ‘Sounds to Me as If the Cops Are Protected No Matter What’
By Curtis Houck | August 26, 2014 | 11:30 PM EDT Reporting on the latest in Ferguson, Missouri for Tuesday night’s CBS Evening News, CBS News correspondent Vladimir Duthiers interviewed a St. Louis detective on what Missouri state law says regarding the ability of law enforcement to use deadly force. After reading from the law directly, Duthiers opined to the detective that it “[s]ounds to me as if the cops are protected no matter what they do.”
To Duthiers’s comment, Detective and St. Louis County Police Association President Gabe Crocker responded that police officers are not “protected by a blanket policy where they can just shoot people and get away with it,” but emphasized that “I do think the law allows for police officers to use deadly force.” [MP3 audio here; Video below]