Leave it to Fox News to turn the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse grounds into a story about black-on-black crime and blaming President Obama.
On The Kelly File, host Shannon Bream announced the news that the Confederate flag in South Carolina is “one step closer to being removed.”
And that made her think that we should be talking more about black criminals.
BREAM: While the murders of nine people in that Charleston church led to weeks of debate over the Confederate flag and claims of institutionalized racism in America, there’s a steady rising death toll getting much less attention in the headlines.
Bream was referring, of course, to black-on-black crime. It’s a subject that Fox only seems to care about when it can deflect from white-on-black violence. In fact, when an African American college professor invited Bill O’Reilly to visit poor neighborhoods in New York to see their efforts at self-improvement, O’Reilly refused.
The guests for this segment were not experts on the subject of Chicago but two guests who have demonstrated antagonism toward Black Lives Matter protesters. Joe Hicks, introduced merely as a “former civil rights leader,” recently said on Fox News that the Baltimore protesters had “an infantile urge here to get what they want.”
The other guest was “foreign affairs columnist” Bret Stephens.
Why host a foreign affairs columnist to discuss inner city violence in Chicago? I submit it has something to do with Stephens’ condescending attitude toward African Americans. After a Department of Justice report found shocking evidence of racism in the Ferguson criminal justice system – Stephens dismissed Black Lives Matter protesters by calling Ferguson “a community in which honest people are afraid to tell the truth.”
Stephens called it “a very good thing” that South Carolina “finally took down the flag,” (though it hasn’t yet). But I’ll give Stephens credit for saying that it should come down. But before he finished speaking, he was praising Republicans for having “an honest conversation about race” and suggesting Democrats were not. “I think that honest conversation also needs to be happening on the Democratic side as well,” he said.
Bream picked up on that point and brought President Obama into the discussion. Turning to Hicks, she said, “There are those who say, ‘Listen we’ve got tragedies happening all around the country in our inner cities. A lot of lives being lost on a daily basis, including the president’s own home town.’ He has talked about the trouble there. But there are people there asking questions about why he has not been more proactively involved.”
Hicks threw in his support for removing the Confederate flag.Then he added, “We’ve heard this whole theme about black lives matter. It appears to be, which black lives matter? Only the ones that perhaps you can politically exploit? …Because clearly, we’ve not heard any kind of opposition or any kind of protest or, certainly, the usual activists have not showed up in Chicago to say that those black lives matter.”
Stephens added, “There is a ground-up movement in the black community to protest precisely this kind of black-on-black violence. The real problem I think is that it’s not having the right echo in government and among what now goes by the name of the civil rights community. Everyone knows the name of Michael Brown, who was a thug from Ferguson, but people are going to immediately forget, or very soon forget the name of Amari Brown, a 7 year-old innocent child getting shot. …The conversation we need to be having starts with how do we flip that priority so that the boys like Amari Brown who are getting the lion’s share of our political and media attention."
Bream did say that all lives matter. But she quickly went back to attacking the White House, this time for saying the violence in Chicago shows we need tougher gun laws.
Watch it below, from the July 6 The Kelly File.
If your going to use the so called bias of Fox News as your soap box, where is the same disdain for every other news channel? Oh, because they are ran by progressives and their coverage leans left their bias is forgiveable? Every other major news outlet operates as a campaign arm of the Democratic party. So you choose the one whose hosts lean Republican to be the one your outraged over? Their views don’t line up with your views so you must create a web site dedicated to these injustices?
I’ve listened for hours as CBS, MSNBC, ABC, Yahoo, and many more spout their liberal rhetoric without for a second mentioning the polar opposite of their views. For every conversation Fox has, they bring someone in from the right and the left to discuss it. Name one other news organization that does it as much as Fox does? For however right Fox leans, every other major news organization leans much further to the left.
Most of Fox’s hosts are conservatives (as they do have a few liberals) but their contributors range from waaay left to waaay right. Name one other news station that has the variety and even keeled guests as them? You can’t, because they don’t exist, although I wish they did.
I can sum everything up into the bias of this website, as liberal reporters reporting on a conservative news network will always have something to be upset about. Why is it the people who cry most about being tolerant are the least so? Why is it that free speech is only allowed if you agree with it? You may have covered Fox being balanced in the past, but this one doesn’t say anything about the balanced reporting on the confederate flag debate that this story is about. Bank robbers Ellen… Bank robbers.
We don’t need to report on everything Fox does to prove the point that Fox is biased and operates as the propaganda arm of the Republican party. Our posts speak for themselves. We include video, almost always of the entire segment so the context is unmistakeable. Our intent is not to “make Fox look bad” but to expose their tactics. Just because Fox is sometimes actually fair and balanced (which we have reported, btw), that does not negate our points any more than the fact that a bank robber is not always robbing banks doesn’t negate the crimes he does commit.
Black people are not the only race that has been slaves, as most races have endured a time of slavery… Including white people. This isn’t something people make up, it’s called history.
About the conversation going from the confederate flag to black on black crime… Who are you to dictate where the conversation goes? They have had a lot of coverage on the removal of the flag, but you select the one where it goes to a larger conversation? Perfect example of liberal media only using news that fits their agenda, as the other 50 conversations that only involve the flag go unnoticed and unreported.
It is a conversation we need to have, and although you see their views as condesending and wrong, they are their views. People are allowed to speak about subjects they are not experts in. I’ve never been president, but I can speak about my views of him and how he has done. I’ve never been both black and white and had a conversation about race, but I can speak about my views on race. I have never been a victim of black on black crime but I can speak on that as well. Does the fact that I’m not an expert mean my views are any less important than yours?
The conversation they were having and are allowed to have is the outrage of a few examples of white people killing black people and why it has constant coverage and attention vs any of the hundreds of black people killed every month by black people. Is it because it happens so often that it’s no longer news worthy while white on black crime are so few that we must cover it until there is nothing left to talk about? Of the cases that have had constant coverage and the most people upset have been people such as Michael Brown (a theif) who was assaulting a police officer and was killed when he was going in to attack again, Eric Gardner who was killed when he repeatedly ignored police orders and resisted arrest while committing a crime (no matter how stupid the crime, it was still illegal and the police were called to get him to move from in front of a store,) Trayvon Martin who was killed after he assaulted a community watch member, Freddie Gray who was a drug dealer who ran from the cops and was arrested for carrying an illegal knife. The guy in South Carolina, whose name escapes me right now, is justified in getting upset about. Its impossible to know what the cop was thinking, but from any and all view points was wrong.
I know there are more, but in every example besides Trayvon, they were people committing crimes who ran, resisted, or failed to comply with police orders. Even in the case of Tamir Rice, he looked like an adult with a gun who reached for it. Any of us put in that officers shoes would have made the same call, or you would chance not getting the oportunity to return home to your family. The officer didnt know it could be fake, he didn’t know Tamir was only twelve. All this outrage equates to Monday Morning Quarterbacking where you question the decision making of someone who didn’t have all the facts of the outcome or know the outcome of the investigation. All they have to go on, “Is my life in danger?” There are no questions you can ask or second guessing, because if you do it could be too late.
So these are the cases the liberal media chooses to cover over the case of a mother and her right year old son who did nothing wrong or to put their lives in danger get shot in the head in their apartment. Or the twelve year old who was playing basketball and was killed… Playing basketball, not committing a crime, not running from the police, not fighting someone. The president comes into this because he chooses to speak about and send reps to the funerals of the people who put their own lives in danger and not the likes of the woman killed by an illegal immigrant in San Francisco. Why? Because it doesn’t fit his agenda. Where is the outrage in the streets? Where are the riots? Where is the media coverage?
Fox News had this conversation because someone has to. Besides, when Fox says they are fair and balanced, it’s because they cover all sides of the argument. So for all of you who are complaining about Fox, it’s because you don’t watch it and believe the media outlets that fill your heads with their own agenda.
Speaking of this nonsense, how about naming an Enrichment center after a career criminal and drug dealer? “Freddie Gray embodies the life and struggle of all young black men.” He also embodies the way to give in to and be a victim of your environment. They say the center is to teach young men the importance of leadership and becoming a role model in their community, but they name it after someone who was part of the problem and the last person you would want your kids to model their lives after. Unless they named it as a reminder of what not to do, by naming it after a man who had a rap sheet longer than most resumes, they are glorifing Gray’s situation and the path he chose to take. I want a building named after me, so I’m going to go commit a few felonies and see where that gets me. After all, that’s all he did. He’s not a civil rights leader, he’s not a martyr, he didn’t accomplish worth emulating, he is just a common criminal who did something stupid by (according to Mosby) stood up in a moving vehicle while confined and fell. What a reason to riot, loot, and model our lives after. Could Baltimore not able to find one person who overcame the hand he was dealt, and was able to become a constructive member of the community? I know they exist, I’ve seen them and heard their inspirational stories… Any one of them would be a better choice, but it doesn’t fit Baltimore’s agenda, and they have that right.
Why is it the ones who scream and cry about free speech are the ones most offended when people use it? The law of free speech isn’t needed for the speech you agree with, but for the speech you don’t.
I stopped listening to Hannity on radio 6 years ago. My psyche just could not handle it…