This week’s Liberal Media Scream features a rare case of a news source pushing back against the bias of a big-shot news host, this time NBC anchor Lester Holt’s view that minorities are targeted by biased police.
Doing the pushing back was former President Donald Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, who challenged Holt’s positive view of Black Lives Matter and rejected the liberal statement that police are racists.
In a special about Barr, who is pitching his new book, One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney, the former attorney general was his typical matter-of-fact self, stopping Holt dead in his tracks when he said, “Black men are the subject of three times as many traffic stops by police.”
Barr responded, “That sometimes is a function of where the police are. Police go where the crime is.”
From the Sunday night NBC News special, “Bill Barr: In the Eye of the Storm”:
LESTER HOLT: Can we talk about the “big lie”?
BILL BARR: Which one is that?
HOLT: Well, you write about the “big lie” being Black Lives Matter.
BARR: Yeah.
HOLT: What did you mean by that?
BARR: Black Lives Matter is based on the premise that the main threat to black welfare in the inner city are out-of-control police force that gratuitously kill African Americans. That’s simply not borne out by the facts.
HOLT, NARRATION: As the nation’s top law enforcement official, Bill Barr always had hard-line views on crime and how to fight it. In 1992, when Barr was attorney general the first time, he wrote a memo called “The Case for More Incarceration” — the kind of tough, “lock ‘em up” policy that’s been cited as a leading cause of destabilizing black communities.
HOLT TO BARR: 1 in 3 black men will be incarcerated sometime in their lifetime, 1 in 17 for white men. Can you not see how that shapes the perception and makes people want to rally around the idea of Black Lives Matter?
BARR: Well, I understand the perception, and I think there’s ambivalence. That’s what I have found on the one hand, there is a concern that, when they encounter police, they’re not given the benefit of the doubt and they’re treated as second-class citizens, and there’s definitely that concern. On the other hand, I think they also understand that the police are there to try to make their community safer, that it’s a very tough job and they want more police.
CROWD: Black Lives Matter! No justice, no peace! No justice, no peace!
HOLT: In society, do you believe there’s such a thing as systemic racism?
BARR: I actually think the whole idea is a cop-out. I think racism exists in people’s, individual’s souls.
HOLT: By dismissing systematic racism, are you not dismissing the pain of African American families that have to sit down with their children and have “the talk” because they’re afraid a simple traffic stop could lead to their deaths?
BARR: No, I don’t — you know, I don’t — I don’t ignore that —
HOLT: “Dismiss” is the term I used.
BARR: I don’t dismiss that as a reality. I don’t think that police are racist and, as a general matter —
HOLT: You don’t see bias in police?
BARR: No, in every study of the situation that I’m familiar with says there is no bias. The numbers are the product of the number of interactions police have.
HOLT: Yeah, and black men are the subject of three times as many traffic stops by police.
BARR: Right. And that sometimes is a function of where the police are. Police go where the crime is.
Brent Baker, vice president of research and publications for the Media Research Center, explains our weekly pick: “Since it happens so rarely, it’s great to see an interviewee press back in real time against the loaded liberal premise pushed by a star TV journalist. Holt seemed baffled that someone wouldn’t see the world through his liberal prism, where America is racist and police enforce that racism, and thus Black Lives Matter should be treated as a heroic cause.”
RATING: THREE out of FIVE SCREAMS.
