Kent Conwell: Beware of the media

Have you ever heard of Bob and Nancy Strait? Married over 65 years, the elderly couple lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

You haven’t? Are you sure? Their home is in the 3300 block of modest, but neat homes on East Virgin Street.

Still say you’ve never heard of them?

Well, I’m not surprised.

A man broke into their home March 14 and assaulted them. Eighty-five year old Nancy was raped and beaten to death. Her ninety-year-old husband was hospitalized for multiple injuries.

The next day, Tyrone Woodfork, 20, was arrested driving the couple’s Dodge Neon.

Bob and Nancy are white. Tyrone is black.

Now do you understand why you have not heard of the incident?

The national media has been too involved with the white on black killing of Trayvon Martin to give any more than minimal back-page space to a black on white killing.

Naturally, there are more headlines up for grabs in the Martin-Zimmerman circus than the Strait-Woodfork assault and murder. White on black is sensational, made even more so by the biased advocacy of zealous firebrands. Black on white or black on black is not sensational.

There is a chilling concept here if you look hard enough.

Did you hear about the mayor of Chicago shutting down the beaches because gangs of blacks were assaulting white families?

Nope!

Did you hear about the two black youths in Kansas City who threw gasoline on a thirteen year old and shouted “how do you like that, white boy?”

Nope!

There were only a handful of journalists who covered the Woodfork-Strait story among them Jerry Wofford, a World Staff writer. Walter E. Williams, a professor of economics at George Mason University, penned a perceptive OpED article in the Times-Dispatch on the dishonesty of the media. Professor Williams is black. He’s worth reading.

There are many more instances of stories being downplayed on the national level because they lack the sensationalism of other stories.

And much too often, the media exacerbates the story by deliberately manipulating the contents. Manipulating – you spell it l-y-i-n-g.

You’ve had to be hiding under a rock not to have heard how the Today Show created a racist image of George Zimmerman when they deliberately altered his 911 call to the Sanford police. The Show claimed Zimmerman said, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.”

His actual words were “This guy looks like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining, and he’s just walking around, looking about.”

The 911 officer replied. “Ok, and is this guy...is he black, white, or Hispanic?”

“He looks black,” Zimmerman replied.

You might be a bleeding heart liberal, but even you will have to admit the Today Show narrative screamed racism while the true narrative in no way suggested such.

I’m like everyone else. I want to see justice done, but for NBC to deliberately lie just to improve ratings is horrendous. The show can deny all it wishes, but it was acting as a judge and jury.

When the network got caught with its pants down, it claimed that it is investigating the incident.

Folks, there ain’t nothing to investigate. The Today Show lied.

According to Professor Williams, editors for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune admitted to deliberately censoring information about black crime for political reasons and in an effort to “guard against subjecting an entire group of people to suspicion.”

Why?

Ratings! And the fact the liberal papers don’t want to get on the bad side of the president.

Now in our part of the country, Southeast Texas, we’re lucky in that our news media do not exhibit the intense bias as the national media. But with technology today, local citizens are much more exposed to national opinion than local.

I’ll wager you have a better idea of the president’s opinion on oil than you do that of your mayor. Most don’t even know their own mayor’s name.

None of us want to see murderers go free, thieves escape punishment, or innocent wrongly convicted, so before you form your own opinion, consider the sources. Just because glitzy news anchors spout opinions doesn’t mean they are true. They’re simply reading what someone in the editorial department put together.

Remember that come election time.