Any news junkie knows the regular gripes against Big Media. One such issue just won’t go away – that is the insistence of whitewashing terms. Journalists prefer militant, insurgent, and suicide bomber over “terrorist” and will seemingly go to any length to avoid the term.
Bill O’Reilly was recently complaining about the New York Times reference to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a “Jordanian Fighter” instead of as a terrorist or serial killer. The Times responded that their audience is sophisticated and needn’t be reminded that al-Zarqawi is a terrorist on a constant basis. While that is partially true, in the larger context of Times news reporting it seems to many to be a whitewashing. Anyway, the Times is free to write whatever it wants and readers are free to read other papers. While it may be bad business to alienate potential readers with such trivialities – bad business decisions remain a protected right as well.
The brouhaha in Charlotte last week was over an “incident” at the 4th of July fireworks show.
Apparently 2,000 people rioted after the fireworks, but the Charlotte Observer was insistent that it was only a “melee”.
Charlotte leaders and police officials promise that next year's uptown fireworks
show will go on despite a melee involving 2,000 people after Monday's event.
The commotion led to one gunshot wound, 20 arrests and a police
crackdown that brought in more than 100 extra officers.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police estimated that crowds numbering 2,000 had started to grow unruly near Trade and Tryon streets after the fireworks show ended about 10:20 p.m. Monday. The masses swarmed up to Eighth Street and down to the transit center in the muggy heat.
Tensions escalated as people threw fireworks into the crowds, blocked traffic and refused to respond to police, said Capt. Tim Jayne. They pushed a Dumpster into the street, he said,
and intimidated people trying to leave parking garages. By 11:10 p.m. police mobilized extra units, sending an urgent call across police radios requesting all available officers to come uptown from across Mecklenburg County. Police activated a civil emergency unit of about 15 officers trained to control crowds. Animal control officers were recruited to guard Tryon Street amid dozens of police and sheriff deputies' cars lining the blocked roads.
Gunshots rang out, with one person shot in the hand. Sgt. Jim Hollingsworth said he saw
people throw lit firecrackers at police. Police called in vans to cart people away and made requests for plastic flex-cuffs to detain them. Police locked down streets block by block, pushing the crowds out of the center city.
It wasn't until a few minutes after 1 a.m. that Jayne started to send officers back to
their districts, but many remained on the streets directing traffic.
They said they had 15 officers working in uptown -- more than scheduled for a regular night -- plus another 39 working off-duty to provide security and guard street barricades at the SkyShow. They had to call in about 100 more to handle the disturbance, Adkins said.
Does this sound like a “melee”?
This is why these newspapers are total pieces of excrement. They are more concerned with how sensitively events are characterized than with what actually happens. My advice to everyone – stop reading newspapers…..your IQ will only go up.
Furthermore, stay away from "free" events. This stuff went on in Philadelphia when I lived there as well.
I figured while on the whitewashing topic I would throw a 9/11 pic up. When was the last time such an image was on network television? This stuff should be plastered everywhere, in my opinion.
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