{"id":207438,"date":"2021-03-21T04:07:30","date_gmt":"2021-03-21T01:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-medias-new-truth\/"},"modified":"2021-03-21T04:07:30","modified_gmt":"2021-03-21T01:07:30","slug":"the-medias-new-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-medias-new-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"#The media\u2019s new truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#The media<\/a>\u2019s new truth<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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The massacres at three massage parlors in the Atlanta area this week, leaving eight human beings dead, others injured, and their families scarred, were horrifying. Read the deeply moving story about the son of one of the women killed to remind yourself of this. It\u2019s brutal. The grief will spread and resonate some more.<\/p>\n

But this story has also been deeply instructive about our national discourse and the state of the American mainstream and elite media. This story\u2019s coverage is proof, it seems to me, that American journalists have officially abandoned the habit of attempting any kind of \u201cobjectivity\u201d in reporting these stories. We are now in the enlightened social justice world of \u201cmoral clarity\u201d and \u201cnarrative-shaping.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the truth: We don\u2019t yet know why this man did these horrible things. It\u2019s probably complicated, or, as my therapist used to say, \u201cmulti-determined.\u201d That\u2019s why we have thorough investigations and trials in America. We only have one solid piece of information as to motive, which is the confession by the mass killer to law enforcement: that he was a religious fundamentalist who was determined to live up to chastity and repeatedly failed, as is often the case.<\/p>\n

\"People
People view a makeshift memorial on March 19, 2021 in Atlanta.<\/figcaption>
Candice Choi\/AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like the 9\/11 bombers or the mass murderer at the Pulse nightclub, he took out his angst on the source of what he saw as his temptation and committed mass murder. This is evil in the classic fundamentalist sense: a perversion of religion and sexual repression into violence.<\/p>\n

We should not take the killer\u2019s confession as definitive, of course. But we can probe it \u2014 and indeed, his story is backed up by acquaintances and friends and family. The New York Times originally ran one piece reporting this out. The Washington Post also followed up, with one piece citing contemporaneous evidence of the man\u2019s \u201creligious mania\u201d<\/a> and sexual compulsion.<\/p>\n

It app<\/a>ears that the man frequented at least two of the spas he attacked. He chose the spas, his ex roommates said, because he thought they were safer than other ways to get easy sex. The NYT ran a second piece which confirms that the killer had indeed been in rehab for sexual impulses, was a religious fanatic, and his next target was going to be \u201ca business tied to the pornography industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

We have yet to find any credible evidence of anti-Asian hatred or bigotry in this man\u2019s history. Maybe we will. We can\u2019t rule it out. But we do know that his roommates say they once asked him if he picked the spas for sex because the women were Asian. And they say he denied it, saying he thought those spas were just the safest way to have quick sex. That needs to be checked out more. But the only piece of evidence about possible anti-Asian bias points away, not toward it.<\/p>\n

And yet. Well, you know what\u2019s coming. Accompanying one original piece on the known facts, the NYT ran nine \u2014 nine! \u2014 separate stories about the incident as part of the narrative that this was an anti-Asian hate crime, fueled by white supremacy and\/or misogyny.<\/p>\n

Not to be outdone, the WaPo ran 16 separate stories on the incident as an anti-Asian white supremacist hate crime. Sixteen! One story for the facts; sixteen stories on how critical race theory would interpret the event regardless of the facts.<\/p>\n

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Locking arms with Asian Americans facing this lethal wave of anti-Asian terror. Their struggle is my struggle. Our struggle is against racism and White supremacist domestic terror. https:\/\/t.co\/CGFpdk4K9t<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) March 17, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

For good measure, one of their columnists denounced reporting of law enforcement\u2019s version of events in the news<\/a>paper, because it distracted attention from the \u201creal\u201d motives. Recently, the NYT ran yet another full-on critical theory piece disguised as news on how these murders are proof of structural racism and sexism \u2014 because some activists say they are.<\/p>\n

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the most powerful journalist at The New York Times, took to Twitter<\/a> in the early morning of March 17 to pronounce: \u201cLast night\u2019s shooting and the appalling rise in anti-Asian violence stem from a sick society where nationalism has been stoked and normalized.\u201d Ibram Kendi<\/a> tweeted: \u201cLocking arms with Asian Americans facing this lethal wave of anti-Asian terror. Their struggle is my struggle. Our struggle is against racism and White Supremacist domestic terror.\u201d<\/p>\n

In The Root, the real reason for the murders was detailed: \u201cWhite supremacy is a virus that, like other viruses, will not die until there are no bodies left for it to infect. Which means the only way to stop it is to locate it, isolate it, extract it, and kill it.\u201d<\/p>\n

None of them mentioned that the shooter killed two white people as well \u2014 a weird thing for a white supremacist to do \u2014 and injured a Latino. None pointed out that the connection between the spas was that the killer had visited them. None explained why, if he were associating Asian people with COVID-19, he would nonetheless expose himself to the virus by having sex with them, or regard these spas as \u201csafer\u201d than other ways to have quick sex.<\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t because, in their worldview, they didn\u2019t need to. What you see here is social justice ideology insisting, as Dean Baquet temporarily explained, that intent doesn\u2019t matter. What matters is impact. The individual killer is in some ways irrelevant. His intentions are not material. He is merely a vehicle for the structural oppressive forces critical theorists believe in. And this \u201cstory\u201d is what the media elites decided to concentrate on: the thing that, so far as we know, didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

\"People
People hold signs while participating in a \u201cstop Asian hate\u201d rally outside the Georgia state Capitol.<\/figcaption>
Ben Gray\/AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Notice how Critical Race Theory operates. The only evidence it needs it already has. Check out the identity of the victim or victims, check out the identity of the culprit, and it\u2019s all you need to know. If the victims are white, they don\u2019t really count. Everything in America is driven by white supremacist hate of some sort or other. You can jam any fact, any phenomenon, into this rubric in order to explain it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason for this shift. Treating the individual as unique, granting him or her rights, defending the presumption of innocence, relying on provable, objective evidence: These core liberal principles are precisely what critical theory aims to deconstruct. And the elite media is in the vanguard of this war on liberalism.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t in any way to deny increasing bias against Asian Americans. It\u2019s real and it\u2019s awful. Asians are targeted by elite leftists, who actively discriminate against them in higher education, and attempt to dismantle the merit-based schools where Asian-American students succeed \u2014 precisely and only because too many Asians are attending. For Trump to give these forces a top-spin with the \u201cChina virus\u201d made things even worse, of course.<\/p>\n

But the theory behind hate crimes law is that these crimes matter more because they terrify so many beyond the actual victim. And so it seems to me that the media\u2019s primary role in cases like these is providing some data and perspective on what\u2019s actually happening, to allay irrational fear. Instead they contribute to the distortion.<\/p>\n

The media is supposed to subject easy, convenient rush-to-judgment narratives to ruthless empirical testing. Now, for purely ideological reasons, they are rushing to promote ready-made narratives, which actually point away from the empirical facts. It\u2019s fanning irrational fear in the cause of ideological indoctrination.<\/p>\n

Excerpted with permission from Andrew Sullivan\u2019s Substack, andrewsullivan.substack.com<\/a><\/em>\n <\/div>\n