Race Baiting and Lies in America–Some Perspective from Michael Yon

Former Green Beret turned freelance combat journalist and author Michael Yon points out that 17-year olds are not “children.” Yet a false narrative is being presented in the MSM and by certain professional race-baiters that Trayvon Martin was just some innocent young child who was gunned down in cold blood by a racist wannabe-cop, George Zimmerman. Based on the evidence presented at Zimmerman’s trial for second-degree murder a jury concluded otherwise. There was a lot more evidence that was not presented at trial that would tend to support the verdict even more strongly.

Michael had a similar experience as a newly qualified 19 year-old Green Beret when a man tried to assault him in a bar and Michael, who believed he was fighting for his life, the man had threatened to kill him, intercepted and countered the man’s first and only punch. Michael punched back and, so he thought, knocked the man out. In fact the man died and Michael faced a 6-month ordeal, replete with much of the same yellow journalism we are seeing today before being cleared.

Please do click through and read the whole thing. Whether you thought the Zimmerman verdict was just or not, you’ll learn something.

(full disclosure, I have met Michael Yon in person, once, and consider him a friend)

Barbara Oakley on Why Most Journalists Are Democrats

In an article ind Psychology Today entitled "Why Most Journalists Are Democrats: A View from the Soviet Socialist Trenches", medical and biological engineering professor, Dr. Barbara Oakley talks about the psychology of conformism, self-selection and why most journalists identify as Democrats. It's worth reading the whole article but this is a point that jumped out at me:

"As far as investigating the dark side of the Major Issues, there’s a critically important concept that students of journalism are rarely taught. It’s easy to find any number of targets to write about in capitalist societies with an open press. But totalitarian governments are journalistic black holes. Journalists can tickle their self-righteous neurocircuitry every day (and many do), by exposing easy-to-find faults in democratic societies. But beyond their event horizon is the bigger story that often remains untold as it occurs—the horrific deaths of millions in totalitarian regimes like the former Soviet Union, Communist China, North Korea and, yes, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. That’s why, when Robert Conquest was asked whether he wanted to retitle his updated The Great Terror, about the Soviet purges, his answer was: Yes, how about I Told You So, You Fucking Fools?"

(via Instapundit)