Oddbean

@af2dd916 I pretty much agree with what you say. But unfortunately, the evidence to the contrary is usually unobtainable for journalists. They don't have the time, experience or resources to properly investigate stories. Journalistically, that have nothing but police blotters and sanitized reports upon which to base their stories. Wouldn't it be fun to administer polygraph tests on police officers?

@3bd57d4d That's just not true. 1) Cops issue statement 2) Black people say it's a lie 3) News prints cops' statement as the truth 4) Facts come out later proving that the cops lied ... 5) New incident happens 6) Cops issue statement 7) Black people say it's a lie Etc... Repeat ad infinitum. It's a weak excuse to say that journalists have no choice but to credulously print whatever lies the cops give them. You don't need to go to journalism school to understand that there are options.

@af2dd916 I just about agree with everything you said in the first part. I take exception to your last paragraph. What I said is true. Contrary to your assertions, journalists don't get the evidence to prove lies. Police reports are ALWAYS written to sound credible even if the report is later found to be false. Oft times defendants won't talk or, when they do talk, it's understandably biased. And police officers are very good at getting their version of facts reported. What options?

@3bd57d4d If someone has lied to you hundreds of times before and you found out after the fact, you should not just believe them the next time they give you a statement and print it as fact. This concept is not complicated. Journalists stating that they cannot corroborate the information yet, and that their source is unreliable and a known liar, is also not complicated. I'm not going to waste time pretending that it's difficult to find *hundreds* of cases of police having lied to journalists.

@3bd57d4d Tomorrow, if Minneapolis cops said that a Black man went into "medical distress" and died of "natural causes or a drug overdose," every major newspaper in the US would print their statement unquestioningly.🤦🏿‍♂️ Even though they know that the 1st statement cops give after an incident is usually a lie. Even though they know that this is the 1st statement that MPD issued after George Floyd: https://web.archive.org/web/20210331182901/https://www.insidempd.com/2020/05/26/man-dies-after-medical-incident-during-police-interaction/ So yeah, Black folk not trusting US news reporting about us, is rational.

@af2dd916 Just on a personal note, not only do I never give credence to a newspaper article reporting the police, I never assume the truth of the statements in a police report. I could tell you stories, but that's another story . . . .

@3bd57d4d Same! But that's not good enough for me. Because most white people in this country do believe these lies printed about Black folk. And there are a lot of these white people. And they vote. So the disinformation is very effective. Yes, I want more people to be able to see through the disinformation. But I also want the disinformation to not exist.

@af2dd916 I'm not particularly disagreeing with you. I base my comments on my experiences from reading countless offense reports, cross-examining or deposing police officers and preparing them to testify when I was a prosecutor. I've represented newspapers and discussed these very issues. For them it's largely an issue of money. But, you raise some interesting issues about how police action is reported. Perhaps they should report on police action like they do Trump's actions.