Today's Reminder That No Matter How Much You Hate the Media, It Isn't Enough
A sad incident occurred at the Home Depot in Fontana, California (fifty miles east of Los Angeles) on February 27. After running in and out of traffic, apparently trying to be hit, Marcus Allen Camacho ran into the store and grabbed a jab saw. Camacho ignored police orders to drop the weapon, shook off a taser hit, and when he started running toward police while brandishing the saw, he was shot and killed by officers. Camacho, who according to his widow suffered from mental health issues, left her and four children behind.
One would think that any reporting on this story aside from bare-boned facts would take time to pursue the mental health angle. Did Camacho seek help for his problems? If so, did he receive any? Were there drugs involved? His wife’s statement on a GoFundMe page seeking donations to pay for funeral expenses makes no mention of any.
He was the victim of battling mental health issues which the we [sic] tried asking and begging for help but the system failed us. Leading to the devastating outcome of him losing his life at the home depot in Fontana California. He leaves behind his family which includes 4 children. We ask for donations to assist with the funeral cost and to help with his children. We thank you all for standing with us and understanding mental health is a serious problem in the world today and laws and more steps need to be put in place to help people battling from it. We just hope from this sad event that it allows and puts in place changes to keep this from happening to another family.
Responsible reporting — fundamentally sound reporting — would pursue answers to these questions. Instead, we have one Khaleda Rahman of Newsweek chiming in with a take so egregiously agenda-driven it barely mentions the facts before diving into the deep end of woke.
First, some background on Ms. Rahman. According to her bio in Newsweek, she is:
… Newsweek's Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on abortion rights, race, education, sexual abuse and capital punishment. Khaleda joined Newsweek in 2019 and had previously worked at the MailOnline in London, New York and Sydney. She is a graduate of University College London.
For the record, London is some 5,400 plus miles from Fontana.
After slightly reworking a Los Angeles television station’s report on the event, Rahman interjects the following:
Police officers in the U.S. shoot and kill more than 1,000 people every year, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, an independent, non-partisan organization dedicated to reducing gun violence.
Black people are victims at a disproportionate rate—they are almost three times more likely to be shot and killed by police than white people, according to a report from the group.
What. The. Everloving.
We first examine the claim that Everytown for Gun Safety is non-partisan. According to Media Bias / Fact Check, a website that for the record doesn’t like RedState either, Everytown for Gun Safety is considered a questionable source due to:
... a methodology that is often misleading, as well as the promotion of propaganda through exaggerated statistics. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to numerous failed fact checks by IFCN fact checkers.
Translation: Everytown for Gun Safety is about as believable as MSNBC. While reporting by at least nominally more mainstream sources such as the Washington Post back the quoted statistics, running to a partisan source and labeling it even keel leaves no mistakes as to Rahman’s intentions. That said, this is a secondary issue.
The primary question is why is Rahman attempting to inject race, specifically claims of excessive police violence aimed at blacks, into a story where the perpetrator was Hispanic? You had a clearly disturbed man threatening not only police but customers at a store, shot and killed only after all other available methods of calming the situation failed. And your response is calling cops bigoted killers? Really?
Rahman next leapfrogs to a completely unrelated incident.
Monday night's incident comes days after two officers in Buffalo, New York, shot and killed a man, prompting authorities to launch an investigation.
Edward Holmes, 58, was fatally shot on Saturday morning.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said officers had responded to a report of a man with a gun and found Holmes holding a shotgun in the middle of a residential street, The Associated Press reported.
Gramaglia said officers had told Holmes to drop his weapon numerous times, but he fired it instead.
The two officers who shot Holmes were placed on administrative leave and New York Attorney General Letitia James' office is investigating. Both are standard protocol in police shootings.
Body camera footage verifies that Holmes fired on police officers. But again, how does this relate to Marcus Allen Camacho’s case? If there is a fender bender in Colorado, does it have any bearing on one three weeks later in Virginia?
The Newsweek article is another sad example of using a tragedy to push an agenda that has nothing to do with the story. It is today’s reminder that no matter how much you hate the media, it isn’t enough.
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