Media myths about the Jena 6

The Christian Science Monitor interviews a newsman who lives and Jena and whose wife teaches school there. The Jena story appears to be as badly botched as the "Duke Rape" case or "Katrina," both huge media hoaxes.

By Craig Franklin:

By now, almost everyone in America has heard of Jena, La., because they've all heard the story of the "Jena 6." White students hanging nooses barely punished, a schoolyard fight, excessive punishment for the six black attackers, racist local officials, public outrage and protests – the outside media made sure everyone knew the basics.

There's just one problem: The media got most of the basics wrong. In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism. Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing but false narrative of racial injustice.

Keep in mind that Franklin is in the news business - the business of congential liars - and is therefore automatically suspect as a "Dan Rather." But when we weigh the lies of one set of liars against the other, we may eventually arrive at the truth.

Captain Ed opines:

So what were the myths? The whites-only tree was never white-only. The nooses were a message -- to the rodeo team, and a reference to the movie Lonesome Dove, not a message to blacks. The DA threat to "black students" in fact was directed at three white girls who wouldn't shut up during a talk to the student body. The party at which the first assault occurred was not a "whites-only" party but a private party, and the assault was just a punch to the face by someone who wasn't a Jena HS student, not a bottle attack. The attacks had nothing to do with the nooses, which appeared briefly three months prior to the assaults.

All of these could easily have been discovered by the professionals in the national media. Franklin references official reports in each of these refutations of Jena mythology, as well as other specific points. The layers of fact-checkers and editors found in the mainstream media apparently couldn't be bothered to research the assumptions made by the demagogues. Instead of using the facts to defuse a controversy fueled by misunderstanding, the media inflamed a nation by amplifying a series of exaggerations and outright lies.

Unfortunately, this revelation comes too late for the town of Jena, which has been vilified for bigotry that it never displayed. It might be that the Jena incident displays another kind of bigotry, one that afflicts urban and Northern writers about their rural and exurban Southern neighbors. The media apparently shares this bigotry, as shown in their impulse to accept the premise of the Jena mythology instead of actually reporting the facts. (via Power Line)

And Flopping Aces Chimes In:

Like the "rapes and murders" of the Superdome during Katrina, or the "brutal rape" of a stripper in the Duke case, we see a MSM too willing to send the lives of people spiraling out of control in an attempt to sensationalize a otherwise boring criminal incident.