The New York Times Tries to Rewrite Very Recent History
America’s newspaper of record, the New York Times, revised history in real time this week, and very recent history at that. In a news article on the attitudes of voters regarding President Trump and the Black Lives Matter movement, reporters Astead Herndon and Dionne Searcey wrote:
A survey of battleground states critical to November’s election largely mirrored the national results. Fifty-four percent of voters in those states said the way the criminal justice system treats black Americans was a bigger problem than the incidents of rioting seen during some demonstrations. Just 37 percent said rioting was a bigger problem, though Mr. Trump and his allies have tried to discredit the protests by focusing on some isolated incidents of violence.
However, based on the New York Times’s own reporting alone, that characterization of the prevalence of violence isn’t remotely accurate. In fact, in the space of three weeks, the Times went from “the devastation in Manhattan was unlike anything New York had seen since the blackout of 1977” and “widespread violence and vandalism breaking out in American cities” to “some isolated incidents of violence.” Further examples abound.
The same article that noted the “devastation in Manhattan” reported that “police said that more than 400 people were arrested in New York overnight on Sunday, mostly for looting and burglary.” Another article said that even with 8,000 officers deployed, the police were “unable to contain the bands of looters or to stop them from smashing windows and breaking into stores,” even with another 700 arrests.
