There was so much wrong with ABC News' town hall special with President Obama that I can't possibly fit it all into four posts, let alone one, so I'm just going to stick with the things I really need to get out of my system, and which illustrate all the other things I can't ...read more
Openly black motorists got a bit of good news this week when Steven Hildreth Jr.explained to the world that since he made it through a traffic stop without being murdered by cops, that whole #BlackLivesMatter thing was a mess of bunk. As long as you're polite and respectful and ...read more
One of the pervasive side-stories to the shocking on-air murders of WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward has been the decisions news organizations have made about how to treat video and images of the actual murders. The killings, committed by former WDBJ reporter ...read more
Since I'm now writing for two websites, sometimes I take for granted that readers will follow me from site to site, and usually, the things I write for Mediaite are distinct enough from what I write here that it doesn't make that much of a difference. However, given the intense ...read more
If you've been on your computer or watched cable news in the past 24 hours, you probably know who Britt McHenry is by now. The ESPN sideline reporter is starring in the most popular video on the internet not to feature the line "Chewie, we're home," and reaping the consequences. ...read more
On Saturday afternoon, 28 year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley shot and killed NYPD Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos as they sat in their patrol car in Brooklyn, in what Brinsley said was an act of revenge for the killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Brinsley had warned of his ...read more
"He [Pantaleo] reiterated that he used a takedown maneuver, that he did not utilize a chokehold. And any contact his arm had with the neck was incidental. He never intended to harm Mr. Garner, nor did he ever apply any pressure to his neck area.We have always maintained it was ...read more
Somebody call Webster's, because Joe Scarborough has rendered its definition of "white privilege" obsolete. On Tuesday morning's Morning Joe, Scarborough and his diverse panel (Howard Dean was once voted for by black people) tackled LeBron James' "I can't breathe" protest ...read more
The Staten Island grand jury's decision not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo, as sickening as it was predictable, has caused the scales to fall from the eyes of a lot of people who were previously blind to the injustice that decision represents. People for whom Michael Brown ...read more
On the same day a grand jury in the Staten Island borough of New York City declined to indict white police officer Daniel Pantaleo for placing Eric Garner in a banned choke-hold that led to the unarmed black man's death, a grand jury in South Carolina returned a murder ...read more
As one of my Twitter friends noted yesterday regarding the decision not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the chokehold death of Eric Garner: James Holmes, who shot and killed 12 people while wounding 70 others in an Aurora movie theater, was apprehended alive. But ...read more
In the wake of a Staten Island grand jury's decision not to indict an NYPD cop in the death of Eric Garner, our endless -- and seemingly worthless -- "national conversation" about race in America is once again front-and-center. Never mind that it was already front-and-center ...read more
Shortly after news of the grand jury decision not to indict the police officer whose chokehold was responsible for the death of Eric Garner, President Obama took to the stage at the White House Tribal Nations Conference, and addressed the decision at the beginning of his ...read more
Back when I was a wee child of 11 years, a cop visited my fifth grade class to talk to us about drugs for the DARE program. He was a young, friendly man with a brown mustache and he played the guitar and sang a song at our graduation assembly. He made our moms cry with joy. I ...read more
"You have to watch the whole tape" was the rallying cry of those who excused the most famous case of police brutality in American history, the beating of Rodney King, and it was this phrase that came to mind when video emerged of the sickening death of Eric Garner. Scant weeks ...read more
Over the past several days, the August 5 shooting of John Crawford III by police at a Beavercreek, Ohio Walmart has gotten stepped-up attention on MSNBC due to new developments in the case, but incredibly Fox News was actually the first cable news network to cover it. The 23 ...read more
'The shocking killing of Eric Garner at the hands of police has become the sort of national story that reveals a lot about the people who talk about it. Differences in life experience and point of view become evident in the types of coverage and commentary that are granted the ...read more
Last week, Eric Garner's death was ruled a homicide by a New York City medical examiner. Garner, you'll recall, was the Staten Island man suspected of selling untaxed cigarettes, and for that heinous crime he was swarmed by police who proceeded to put him in a chokehold until he ...read more
The death of Eric Garner was back in the news this week when the medical examiner ruled the killing a homicide, giving more white people the opportunity to say something stupid about it. While Garner's chokehold-related death at the hands of police has raised concerns about ...read more
There was another "botched" execution on Wednesday, this time in Arizona, where it took Joseph Wood nearly two hours to die after being administered a lethal injection that was supposed to take 10 minutes to kill him. This led our own Tommy Christopher to wonder why it would be ...read more
The news of Arizona's botched execution of Joseph R. Wood III Wednesday afternoon has become another dominant story in this summer of news that won't quit, but what's really unusual about this event is the way in which it is being covered by the television news media, and how ...read more
Joseph Rudolph Wood III began the end of his life on August 7, 1989, when he walked into an auto body shop and killed his 29 year-old ex-girlfriend Debbie Dietz, and her 55 year-old father Gene Dietz, with a .38 caliber revolver. Police shot Wood several times when he picked up ...read more
"You have to watch the whole tape" was the rallying cry of those who excused the most famous case of police brutality in American history, the beating of Rodney King, and it was this phrase that came to mind when video emerged of the sickening death of Eric Garner. Last week, ...read more
