There they go again: The Knockout Games the New York Times says are not happening, just keep happening.
I’m sorry to keep harping on the New York Times, but it is just too much fun not to do it. And besides, I’m waiting for the day when The Times has to grudgingly admit something is going on.
Call it a character failing.
It took a long time for the Times to figure out what Walter Duranty had done. How its Moscow bureau chief in the 1930’s knew about atrocities that the Soviet Union was perpetrating on its citizens. But he decided to ignore and lie about them, and instead tell his readers about the wonders of state control.
He won the Pulitzer for it. Eighty-two years later, The Times has yet to return it.
Meanwhile, back to the present, following the Times’ lead, local media keeps getting it wrong. This time in Ft. Meyers, Florida. November 2013.
The newspapers and TV news reported that Traveshia Banks was a part of a large group of “suspicious teenagers” who, at “random,” attacked a senior citizen this week while he was weeding his garden. The NBC affiliate picks up the story: 727
“All of a sudden I felt a blow to my hip and I was on the ground. I turned around to see what happened and there was a girl standing there laughing."
Concerned citizens saw a group of suspicious teenagers walking down a nearby street and took several photographs with their cell phones, providing investigators with what would later be a crucial piece of evidence.
The video is far more dramatic: First the laughing. Shrieking. Encouragement. Then the running. Then a black person taking a running, flying jump that ends in a full kick that knocks the old white dude down while his back was turned and he was bent over.728
Soon after, another victim reported another attack.729 Then another.730
Local news accounts show how this attack is part of the now-infamous Knockout Game trend being reported in newspapers across the country -- if only, in some cases, to dismiss it as a fad. Or a hoax.
Local news outlets did not report the “teenagers” were black. Or that more than 99 percent of the people associated with these attacks are black. And most of the victims are not.
“Newspapers just won’t talk about how the Knockout Game is an example of racial violence,” said Chuck White, a Jacksonville, Florida talk show host. “The same media that has turned our country into the most race conscious place on earth, tries to pretend race is not an issue when it comes to black mob violence. And even though only one person was arrested, many were present. Many took pictures. So this was a mob attack. But the statistics will never show it. That is why this crime is under-reported and mis-reported across the country.”
The NBC affiliate did track down several teenagers familiar with the game, who said it was no big deal:731
"I'm not gonna say it's not right and it's not fun, because it is fun," said a teen familiar with the game.
In many cases across the country, teens are recording the punches and kicks on their cell phones then posting them online. The attacks are often impossible to predict and prevent.
"What's not fun about it? Just go up to a random person slap them and run away," said another teen.
At least one reader agreed that media has no reason to report this as another example of racial violence: “I don't think race has anything to do with it. Most teens are mischievous and get in trouble for fun,” said Kevin Green to the Fort Meyers News Press.
Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott “pledged to flush out the cowards perpetrating these acts and make examples of them without delay.”
Which is pretty much what he must have said, a few months before, a black person “sucker-punched” his daughter on the campus of Florida Gulf Coast University during a Haunted House promotion.732