America is still reeling from the horrific Charleston, S.C., massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that claimed the lives of nine innocent people. The last thing the community and our country need are hysterical journalists compounding the pain with inflammatory reporting on an unsubstantiated “epidemic” of black-church arsons.
The Sun neglected to mention that Clinton had falsely claimed at the time that he had “vivid and painful memories of black churches being burned in my own state when I was a child” — an assertion immediately debunked by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Reminder: Several of the hyped hate crimes against black churches had been committed by black suspects; a significant number of the black churches were, in fact, white churches; and the complex motives behind the crimes included mental illness, vandalism, and concealment of theft.
Teach for America alumnus agitator DeRay McKesson quickly added his Twitter kerosene to the fire, reflexively claiming that the “KKK” was responsible for a half-dozen black-church burnings.
Another “was likely touched off by an electrical short” after a tree limb fell on the property, yanking the electrical service line with it.
Mic.com quoted a hate-crimes “expert” blaming — you guessed it — “the growth of violent right-wing extremist ideology in the U.S.” for the nonexistent black-church-arson epidemic.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. In this case, it’s coming from the five-alarm self-immolation of agenda-driven journalism’s credibility.