Inflaming the situation

Inflaming the situation is a hot issue at the moment. 

In a comment today Pugnazious at Biased BBC recalls a previous example of the BBC doing just that - and, in the process, reminds me of how stories often become much clearer after the mainstream media bandwagon moves on...

Do you recall the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014? He was a black man shot by a white police officer, Darren Wilson. Riots ensued, and BBC journalists (along with much of the media) went into overdrive, heavily pushing the racism angle. 

But go to the Wikipedia page on the Shooting of Michael Brown and you'll see that, four years on, the view is now that Officer Wilson killed Mr Brown in self-defence. Forensic evidence and credible witnesses backed his story. Unreliable witnesses had spread false rumours. It wasn't a racist police killing. 

And now look back, as Pugnazious has done, at Clive Myrie's BBC reporting of the story at the time and just marvel at its dangerous wrongheadedness:

The BBC and Left-wing media tried to stir up a race war, and were partially successful, by falsely claiming white police officers were killing unarmed black men because they were ‘black’….here’s the BBC’s Clive Myrie [black] adding to the angry rhetoric...

‘Well, slavery may have long gone, but apprehending someone because they could be up to no good, simply because they’re black is still police policy in much of the land….'

Myrie sites ‘Ferguson’ as proof that Blacks are being targeted… 

‘It is through the prism of racism that many black Americans see the deaths of countless black men at the hands of white police officers, and a look at the facts suggests this might be appropriate. 

Ferguson, in St Louis in Missouri, is the place where an unarmed black teenager called Michael Brown was shot dead by a white police officer. 

In the midst of the Obama era, oh, what a rude awakening the events of Ferguson have been.’ 

Except that’s just not true…the police officer was being attacked, he was punched, the man tried to take his weapon and then ran at the officer the result of which he was then shot. 

Many of the shootings so dramatically and sensationally hyped by the BBC as race killings have in fact been by non-white officers…so race is not an issue…and studies have shown that it is Whites who are more likely to be shot whilst Blacks are more likely to be stopped. 

The result of all this was that Blacks then launched lethal attacks on police officers killing many due to the perception, driven by the Media, that police were targeting Blacks. 

Police officers died because of reporting from the likes of the BBC’s Clive Myrie….and yet it is Trump and his criticism of that feral Media who is to blame for the angry, violent divisions in America?

Re-reading Clive Myrie's report in late 2018 it's hard not to use the term 'fake news' in connection with it. 

It was doubtless very heartfelt and he surely thought it was true that the death of Michael Brown was connected to racism, despite official denials, but he allowed himself to take sides and fell foul of the actual truth of the situation. 

That he was very far from alone in doing this doesn't really excuse him.