Police And Prosecutor Debunk Fox Claims That Recent Crimes Were Racially Motivated

ZACHARY PLEAT/Media Matters For America

Fox News has recently engaged in racebaiting by baselessly claiming that a Florida student's beating on a school bus and the shooting of an Australian college student in Oklahoma were racially motivated. But police and a prosecutor involved in these cases debunked these claims during interviews on Fox.

In early August, a video of three teenagers beating another student on a school bus in Florida spread across national news outlets, and an August 6 report from the Orlando Sentinel noted that the attack was in retaliation for the victim notifying school officials that the three teens tried to sell him drugs. But Fox News took a different angle. Since all three of the alleged perpetrators are black, and the victim is white, Fox repeatedly claimedthat race was the motivating factor for the attack. On August 9, Fox host Steve Doocy bragged that it was Fox News that brought race "to the forefront" of the story.

But the day before, Fox had interviewed the police chief of the town where the beating occurred. During the interview, Gulfport Police Chief Robert Vincent said: "The race difference between the victim and the defendants in this case is purely coincidental, there is absolutely no indication that race was a motivator in the attack." 

Instead of learning from their mistake, Fox News hosts also baselessly insisted race was a factor when reporting on the tragic death of Christopher Lane, an Australian attending college in Oklahoma. Because Lane was white and two of the three suspects charged in connection with his shooting are black, Fox presented this crime as having a racial bias. On the August 21 edition of Fox & Friends, the hosts demanded to know why President Obama, Al Sharpton, or Jesse Jackson hadn't commented on the case, an attempt to connect this crime to the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Once again, an official involved with the case debunked the network's assertions that race was a factor in this crime. On August 22, Fox News host Greta van Susteren interviewed local District Attorney Jason Hicks, who said that with all of his evidence for the case, he had nothing to "indicate that the killing of Christopher Lane was related to either his race or to his nationality." 

How many more crimes will Fox News falsely charge are motivated by race?

Drudge Leaves White Alleged Accomplice Out Of Lane Murderer Montage

MATT GERTZ/Media Matters For America:

In an attempt to promote stereotypes of African-Americans as violent and dangerous, Matt Drudge is featuring on his website the photos of two black teenagers who allegedly killed an Australian athlete, leaving out the photo of their alleged white accomplice.

On August 16, Australian baseball player Christopher Lane was shot and killed while jogging in Oklahoma. Two black teenagers have been charged with first-degree murder in the case while a white teenager has been charged as an accessory for allegedly driving the getaway car. Conservative media have suggested that the shooting was racially motivated, despite the fact that one of the alleged perpetrators was white and that the local district attorney said he has seen nothing to "indicate that the killing of Christopher Lane was related to either his race or to his nationality." 

Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, who has a long record of bigoted commentary, claimed during a Fox News appearance that the murder is part of a societal trend in which "interracial violence is overwhelmingly black-on-white." Drudge is featuring that commentary under photos of the two black teens charged with murder, leaving out their alleged white accomplice.

 

George Will Suggests Obama Would Be Losing If He Weren't Black

From Media Matters

Washington Post columnist George Will claimed that President Obama's "administration is in shambles, yet he is prospering politically." Will suggested that the explanation for this alleged contradiction may be that Americans seem "especially reluctant not to give up on the first African American president."

From Will's October 1 Washington Post column:

Obama's administration is in shambles, yet he is prospering politically. This may not, however, entirely be evidence of the irrationality of the electorate. Something more benign may be at work.

A significant date in the nation's civil rights progress involved an African American baseball player named Robinson, but not Jackie. The date was Oct. 3, 1974, when Frank Robinson, one the greatest players in history, was hired by the Cleveland Indians as the major leagues' first black manager. But an even more important milestone of progress occurred June 19, 1977, when the Indians fired him. That was colorblind equality.

Managers get fired all the time. The fact that the Indians felt free to fire Robinson -- who went on to have a distinguished career managing four other teams -- showed that another racial barrier had fallen: Henceforth, African Americans, too, could enjoy the God-given right to be scapegoats for impatient team owners or incompetent team executives.

Perhaps a pleasant paradox defines this political season: That Obama is African American may be important, but in a way quite unlike that darkly suggested by, for example, MSNBC's excitable boys and girls who, with their (at most) one-track minds and exquisitely sensitive olfactory receptors, sniff racism in any criticism of their pin-up. Instead, the nation, which is generally reluctant to declare a president a failure -- thereby admitting that it made a mistake in choosing him -- seems especially reluctant not to give up on the first African American president. If so, the 2012 election speaks well of the nation's heart, if not its head.

Drudge-Hyped Obama Video Turns Out To Be Publicly Covered 2007 Speech

BENJY SARLIN/TPM

Sean Hannity, The Daily Caller, and Drudge Report spent hours hyping a racially explosive secret video of President Obama. But the bombshell clip turned out to be a public speech from June 2007 that was covered by the major networks, including FOX News, at the time.

Excerpts of the open press speech to historically black Hampton University were already easily available (and quickly discovered by reporters after Drudge teased the clip on his website hours before the “new” Daily Caller/Hannity clip even aired). But Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson claimed the video was relevant because it contained additional ad-libbed portions that went off the prepared remarks.

Among the sinister revelations Drudge, Hannity, and Carlson cited: Obama’s use of what they considered an overly African-American cadence to his voice in front of the majority. “This accent is absurd. This is not the way Obama talks,” Carlson said on FOX. Drudge Report teased “THE ACCENT” and “THE ANGER” as scoops.

Hannity, who was a leading figure on the right in promoting Obama’s relationship with Jeremiah Wright as a story in 2008, also pointed to Obama acknowledging Wright as “friend and great leader” at the event. As was widely reported at the time, the two were close until Obama disowned him later that year over his continued inflammatory comments.

The Obama campaign dismissed the video as the work of “Romney’s allies” to distract from his 47 percent comments, although the Romney campaign denied having anything to do with the story and appeared reluctant to discuss it in any capacity.

Despite protestations by Carlson that the media ignored Obama’s speech, CNN’s Peter Hamby pointed out that FOX News aired video of the speech at the time:

BRIT HUME: In the meantime, Senator Obama today said the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse what he calls a quiet riot among black Americans, a riot he suggests is ready to erupt. Obama said African American resentments and frustrations are building, especially, he said, because so many blacks from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are still displaced 21 months after Hurricane Katrina. Obama warned against conditions similar to those in Los Angeles 15 years ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), ILLINOIS: Not only do we still have the scars of the riots and the quiet riots that happen every day, but how in too many places all across the country, we haven’t even bothered to take the bullet out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Obama was speaking at a conference of black clergy at Virginia’s Hampton University.

Hannity and Carlson accused Obama of injecting race into the much-criticized response to Hurricane Katrina. While Obama never mentioned race while discussing the disaster in his speech, he complained that the federal government was slow to waive a Stafford Act requirement governing disaster relief that required the affected area to pay some of the costs of aid that they waived after 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew. According to Obama, this reluctance “tells me that somehow, the people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!”

Obama was hardly the only one complaining about ongoing fights with Congress and the Bush administration over the Stafford Act requirement at the time, however. Then-Congressman Bobby Jindal (R-LA) led a push the same year to revise the law to lessen its funding requirement in circumstances like New Orleans’. On the Senate side, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) pushed hard for more waivers. Sean Reilly, a member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, echoed Obama’s complaints almost word for word for a PBS Frontline segment on the Stafford Act.

“Now, one thing that really aggravated us is the federal government waived the match after 9/11, after Hurricane Andrew, after Hurricane Iniki in Hawaii,” he said. “It was hard for us to understand why they were reluctant to waive the match in our case, when we suffered the first and third worst disasters in the American history. Thankfully Congress remedied that, [but] it took too long. Haggling over the match slowed down projects.”