Tweet
Just a few weeks ago the idea of “peaceful riots” would have seemed absurd, but the American media is nothing if not inventive these days.
Earlier this week, ABC News reported, “Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified.”
Legal scholar Eugene Volokh wonders how this terminology would work in the real world: “You are being charged with an intensified peaceful demonstration, in the second degree. How do you plead?”
Indeed, the media’s commitment to tempering their descriptions of violent riots sweeping the nation as “mostly peaceful” is relentless – that particular phrase has become a media cliché practically overnight.
Of course, America’s police officers could also be accurately described as “mostly peaceful,” but any journalist who dared to give cops the same generous benefit of the doubt would likely cause a riot in their own newsroom.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ar...b__143855.html
Earlier this week, ABC News reported, “Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified.”
Legal scholar Eugene Volokh wonders how this terminology would work in the real world: “You are being charged with an intensified peaceful demonstration, in the second degree. How do you plead?”
Indeed, the media’s commitment to tempering their descriptions of violent riots sweeping the nation as “mostly peaceful” is relentless – that particular phrase has become a media cliché practically overnight.
Of course, America’s police officers could also be accurately described as “mostly peaceful,” but any journalist who dared to give cops the same generous benefit of the doubt would likely cause a riot in their own newsroom.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ar...b__143855.html
Comment