For One Week The Narrative Was That Michael Brown Was Shot In the Back.
Reports From Multiple Coroners Say All Shots Were To the Front.

I guess this is why I hate following these "breaking news" stories, chasing each new "fact" and then opining upon them.

Almost none of the "facts" we originally new about this shooting are facts at all.

Greg Gutfeld mentioned a New York Times reporter who seemed to object to reporting that the coroner's report that Michael Brown had marijuana in his system at the time of death, by asking, "Why does it matter that he had marijuana in his system?"

Gutfeld answered: It matters because it's a fact.

He further noted that the media seemed very interested in a "clean narrative" -- not accurate reporting, but a clean, Aesop's Fable-like tight little narrative that proved a particular point in an ongoing Morality Play called "the news."

He's right: The "narrative-makers" of the media are interested in writing Aesop's Fables with a political agenda item, and not so interested in reporting the facts of incidents and events, which are often messy, complicated, contradictory, amenable to multiple interpretations, and hard to fix into a specific Morality Play "lesson" -- Because life itself is messy, complicated, contradictory, amenable to multiple interpretations, and hard to fix into a specific Morality Play "lesson."

Life is complicated -- New York Times reports on progressive agenda items, less so.

Reporting used to be about real life.

But it's not about real life anymore. It's about simplified, sharp-corners-sanded-down fables -- like Children's Stories.

The media is writing their reports like Children's Stories because they conceive of their audience as essentially children, whom you must protect from jarring facts which might teach "the wrong lessons."

Incidentally, Gutfeld might have added:

And if the toxicology report on the cop had shown the presence of drugs or alcohol, that would matter, right?

Because The Narrative. The New York Times would have no problem seeing the potential relevance of a cop whose judgement might have been chemically impaired at the time of the shooting.

But as regards Gentle Giant Michael Brown -- pish-posh, it's entirely irrelevant, so irrelevant that it maybe might need to be suppressed, to prevent the stupid children reading the New York Times from drawing the wrong conclusions.

Maybe we should just go Full Aesop and say that Michael Brown was a happy turtle and the officer who shot him was a rapacious hawk.

People would "get it" then.

posted by Ace at 05:28 PM

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