The media's deception about the Occupy Oakland murder

BizzyBlog dissects the media deception surrounding the murder at Occupy Oakland last month. It follows the prototypical arc of lies so common in situations like this:

– First, a small fact leaks out that reflects badly on some leftist cause;
– As the breaking news reaches its apogee in the public consciousness, the media will issue a flurry of unsupported and often patently untrue denials and obfuscations, so that the average reader doesn’t associate the inconvenient fact with the leftist cause;
– After the story ceases to be breaking news, and the average person is no longer paying attention, the original fact is conceded to be true after all, and the denials and lies and conveniently swept under the rug, having served their purpose;
– Success: the fact was suppressed and a scandal avoided, but after it’s all over the media can say in retrospect that they reported the truth eventually (when it was no longer damaging).

In this case, the “inconvenient truth” was that one of the Occupy Oakland protesters was murdered at the Occupy Oakland camp back on November 10. As BizzyBlog details, an initial eyewitness account of the victim as one of the Occupiers was subsequently thrown into doubt by the San Francisco Chronicle‘s reportage, in their furious attempt to disassociate the Occupy movement from any taint of violent crime:

Surprise (Not): AP Now Reports That Murder Victim Stayed at Occupy Oakland for Two Weeks; SF Chron Still Covering Up

On December 2, the Associated Press carried a story by Terry Collins with the following headline: “Murder charge filed in Occupy Oakland slaying.”

What? I thought that the related November attack, despite a statement from an actual eyewitness, “was unrelated to the ongoing protest of U.S. financial institutions” — i.e., that it was unrelated to Occupy Oakland. After all, the San Francisco Chronicle and the AP both carried statements to that effect several weeks ago.

…

Very few news readers, listeners, and viewers who were told that the murder had nothing to do with Occupy Oakland will ever learn that it really did. For the malpracticing leftist press, that probably goes into the “Mission Accomplished” file.

See the link for the full story, with damning quotes from the San Francisco Chronicle.

(Also see my original post on this topic.)

The Bay Citizen also has a mugshot of the murder suspect.

This “briefly cover up unwanted facts with a blizzard of unsupportable lies” technique is by now so commonplace in media practice that no one even gets worked up when a clear example is exposed. Just another day in medialand. As I said in my original post, “This is how history is molded. One crucial detail at a time.”