[Mod Note: I moved this from The Epstein thread. The Geragos podcast mentioned below was first referenced here. -- WN]

This is completely an aside, but in the same podcast Geragos talked about how the Daniel Shaver's execution case was progressing. Basically, he said the Az govt has cynically lied and obfuscated its way to getting a complete acquittal for the murdering officers, and on top of that they are both were able to retire with full benefits. And in the civil trial Shaver's widowed wife and children haven't gotten a penny, as the govt has effectively been able to stonewall the case progressing (he says their game plan is just to stonewall and draw things out indefinitely until statute of limitations pass and noone cares anymore).

Anyways, both him and Carolla talked about how the justice system is very corrupt, and it is very important for the media's job to hold the govt accountable. And he said the media has completely dropped the ball on this one for political reasons, mainly the victim is a white male and so the case doesn't fit the preferred political narrative.

Anyways, Geragos said he is stunned in 2019 police officers could execute a citizen blatantly like that on video, with no legal or (so far) civil repercussions; and shows just how corrupt our legal and justice system is and how easy it is for them to get away with it when the media isn't interested in holding them accountable (in case anyone was wondering if Geragos is holding water for Acosta because he is on team law and order).

The Shavers case is insane. That cop should be in jail for the rest of his life.

Kelhus,

The police killing of Kelly Thomas (unarmed homeless white man in Fullerton, CA) got a lot of press and the police killing of Ezell Ford Jr. (unarmed mentally challenged Black man in Los Angeles) got very little press. IE an anecdote is an anecdote.

Got data?

Acquitted and on disability, ironically claiming PTSD from committing murder. Paychecks coming in 1st of the month the rest of his life.

Have you seen the video of the Shavers case? It is the most disturbing, ****ed up execution style killing you have ever seen in your life. This would have been MAJOR if it was a narrative the media was interested in. But white cop, white victim? Nah. Move along. I hear some white teenagers in red hats made some faces at a Native American. Now there is a story we can get behind.

I don’t actually recall either of the cases you mentioned, I’ll have to take your word for it on them.

Anyways. This is like a derail on a derail. Maybe we need to make a media bias thread where all eve elephant supporters can criticize CNN and all the donkey supporters can criticize Fox News: and Luckbox will tell us we are all getting played.

Yep. I listened to the Geragos podcast, and that outcome is ridiculous.

What would it take for you to falsify your gut feeling on the matter?

I'm not making an assertion one way or the other. You are. I'm asking for something other than anecdotes or at least for you to be a little less confident in your assertion.

The white woman in Minnesota who was shot got a lot of media attention as well.

The incidents where Black people being shot that have generated enormous amounts of attention have other factors, like riots and demonstrations that happened after the fact. You expect the media not to cover that? And I'll suggest that the riots don't simply happen because it's a Black victim. The police shooting of Ezell Ford Jr. got much less protest and much less attention because LAPD (far from perfect of course) has earned a somewhat better reputation than it had in the past, thanks largely to significant changes that were brought about in the wake of the LA riots. Ferguson police had terrible relations with the community and it wasn't just one incident, but an accumulation.

At any rate, that's a bunch of speculation on my part. I'm pretty clear about that. You are asserting that the media (CNN I guess) has an agenda that it wants to publicize it more when white cops kill Black people than when white people are killed. I actually think that's absurd and would like something more than anecdotes if you have it.

Kelhus is correct. There is a deep rabbit hole with some aspects of this but saying that the media is biased when it comes to how these things are reported is a pretty easy case to make.
Sure there are always going to be counter-examples with stuff like this too.

It's definitely not an easy case to make. You don't get to do it with a few examples. It's a lot of data and analysis.

Start here I guess: https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/home.page

Geragos made this allegation in his podcast. I don’t have an opinion as to whether it’s correct or not. I do think that Geragos is correct to say that the Shavers killing was as bad as it gets. The video shows that the killing was wholly and completely unjustified. There may be ties, per Geragos, but police killing don’t get any worse.

Of course, Geragos is representing Shavers’ widow and isn’t an unbiased source.

I agree that anecdotes are entirely insufficient to support Geragos’s idea here.

You don't need to examine a bunch of police shootings to know that the media pushes race-based issues. You think the only racial grievance outlets are Fox and Brietbart but it's the entire MSM. Thinking that which shootings make national news and which ones don't is basically random seems nuts. 99% of police shootings don't make national news and it isn't surprising to me in the least that of the ones that do, some don't stand up to scrutiny. But I've been told to keep the spiciness of my posting down and this thread had enough potential for that already.

Yes, you do. Of course you do. That the issues that are covered have a racial element is wholly insufficient to prove that the issues are covered because they have a racial element. Racial elements are pervasive in America, and plenty of issues that aren't covered have racial elements. If you fail to scrutinize the issues that are not covered, you're peddling bull**** narratives based on cherry picking instead of adding something meaningful to the conversation.

How do you falsify a feeling?

To answer more seriously, you disagreeing with me probably isn't going to cut it, because you disagree with me on literally everything. Someone more measured coming in and saying, hey I looked at the data on this and this is what I saw could potentially go a long way. Wouldn't be the first time.

I realize Geragos is not an unbiased source. But on there surface, given how insane the shooting was, the way the judicial process has gone, and the relative dearth of media scrutiny (compared to many other cases with more overt racial elements), Geragos's supposition seems reasonable.

The bolded isn't something that logically follows. Just because something might be cherry-picked, that doesn't mean that it can't have importance or even be salient when it comes to understanding a particular issue.
In this case where we are talking about media agendas--I do wholeheartedly agree that it is important to discuss what the media does not report as much as it is to discuss what they do. But that is part of a broader discussion about the media. And here in this case, that is a part of the argument--that certain shootings are covered and other ones aren't covered (and I mean nationally).
I suppose what you are looking for is statistics which I admit I don't have, and while there are some conspiracies here I'll also admit that this isn't the exact area where I want to go about showing my broader thesis that the media is pushing divisiveness.
But given that no one is arguing that police violence isn't a major issue or that there aren't a lot of racist murdering cops, I'm not sure what "adding to the conversation" even means for you here. It can be a big deal and the media can also push it to stir up racial tensions at the same time.

I mean, if you want to just go ahead and concede that your gut feelings are unfalsifiable and therefore are not worthy of discussion, then ok. The conversation would be as sensible as an atheist talking to a theist who already knows that faith is irrational.

This is you conceding the whole argument. You're literally conceding that all you know is cherry picked anecdotes that reinforce your preconceived notions.

We are talking about the hypothesis that the media only pushes stories about cops killing civilians when the cop is white and the civilian is black. I think that's bull****, and no one has put forth any sort of real evidence to back that up.

I'm not sure what kind of data there might be to back that up. According to WaPo twice as many whites were shot and killed by police as blacks in 2018. Same for 2017.

I watch the standard network 6:30 pm nightly news pretty much every night, and all I can say is that there is far more coverage of shootings of black people than white. Seems the same in the NY Times also.

Of course in many cases the media is covering protests or community outrage related to the shooting. So in many cases the protest is the story moreso than the actual shooting. Obviously there are hundreds of black people killed by police each year that never get any national media coverage. I can't remember honestly the last time a white person being shot and killed by a cop made the national news, although I'm sure it happens.

Probably Covington kids a good example of media hyping a divisive story to get ratings. Was literally a non story. No one got injured. No one got hurt. No one had a hand laid on them or got pushed. Entire story was based on the media fabrication of despicable racist Trumpkin teenagers vs. noble saintly native American. If not a fabrication, certainly a convenient pigeonholing of real live human beings into stock movie good vs evil characters.

At any rate the media was successful, a smirking teenager became headline national news for weeks. Right wing media was no less at fault, they hyped the story just as much, to sow their own desired divisions and generate ratings.

I'm not conceding anything and I don't know if that is Kelhus' argument or not but it isn't mine. But just the same I can't think of a single white person who has made national news after being killed by police in recent times.* Only a handful of blacks too. So when these things do make national news it is a rare event regardless of race. Any conversation that involves national coverage of people killed by police is anecdotal just by the nature of the subject matter.
* 17 year old white girl killed recently in California
This story here just happened and is pretty messed up and has the potential to be a big story. So perhaps I'll be proven wrong there.
** link to bodycam footage
I didn't watch it but more of the story is here. It seems like she might have actually pointed a replica at a cop as crazy as that seems. So story probably won't be getting bigger.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the last politics forum had a very popular long running thread of cherrypicked anecdotes of police killings to frame a specific narrative. Having a political/sociological discussion based on cherrypicked anecdotal evidence didn’t seem to be a problem then.

To Microbet (in relation to the derail),

Anyways, that derail was me just posting an anecdotal political/sociological story of something I heard on a podcast, that wasn't particularly related to the thread subject, that was interesting. I wasn't presenting a graduate thesis.

If you think I am giving the theory presented too much credence based on too flimsy evidence that is fine, I can accept that.

Like I said, maybe some day we could have an actual thread on media bias, and how it shapes our politics/society, which could be interesting; but I suspect would just devolve into partisan bickering whether CNN or Fox News is more biased.

Maybe you missed me posting this in the very next post?

"To answer more seriously, you disagreeing with me probably isn't going to cut it, because you disagree with me on literally everything. Someone more measured coming in and saying, hey I looked at the data on this and this is what I saw could potentially go a long way. Wouldn't be the first time.

I realize Geragos is not an unbiased source. But on there surface, given how insane the shooting was, the way the judicial process has gone, and the relative dearth of media scrutiny (compared to many other cases with more overt racial elements), Geragos's supposition seems reasonable."