Newsrooms began the week by dedicating an enormous amount of space to the gala White House Correspondents Dinner, but they had to shift gears after riots broke out just an hour from the nation’s capital.
The Baltimore protests went from peaceful to violent to peaceful again, and reporters long accustomed to giving little thought to Charm City were forced to play play catch-up.
However, even as a spectacular but non-lethal riot broke out early Monday, newsrooms were still fascinated with the glitzy Saturday night dinner — also known as “Nerd Prom” — which dominated coverage right up until the heaviest day of domestic disturbances.
It wasn’t until the riot in Baltimore turned serious late Monday, that the media suddenly snapped out of their “Nerd Prom” reverie and assigned top personalities to cover the unrest.
This point did not go unnoticed by protesters.
“My question to you is, when we were out here protesting all last week for six days straight peacefully, there were no news cameras, there were no helicopters, there was no riot gear, and nobody heard us,” one protester, Danielle Williams, asked MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts, who had just spent his weekend attending various “Nerd Prom” events.
“So now that we’ve burned down buildings and set businesses on fire and looted buildings, now all of the sudden everybody wants to hear us,” Williams said. “Why does it take a catastrophe like this in order for America to hear our cry?”
While much of the Baltimore coverage was late, some of it was downright strange, with at least a few media personalities firing off regrettable statements and half-baked theories and others snapping at protesters.
Here are five media figures who stumbled badly in their Baltimore coverage and commentary:
1. Michael Eric Dyson: Blame Sports
MSNBC contributor Michael Eric Dyson was quick to blame the city’s decades of poverty on the Baltimore Orioles and the Baltimore Ravens who, he said, are complicit with the “forces of oppression” that “have besieged that urban terrain.”
“[W]ith their tax exempt status and their being given tremendous goodies to stay in the city,” he said, “the urban blight contrasted to the extraordinary capital for some people.”
He also said that without the violent protests, “[O]ur commentary would not be in Baltimore talking about the slow terror of expulsions from schools, the rising rates of lead poisoning, the export of jobs to places across the waters that have no ability to refuel and recycle that capital back here.”
“So when you put all that together, it’s easy to point a gun of analysis and shoot them with the bullets of our condemnation instead of saying we have to together find a way out of this,” Dyson said.
2. Megyn Kelly: Just Asking Questions
On Monday, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly blindly speculated over whether a shooting in Brooklyn, N.Y., might somehow be related to the Baltimore riots.
“Three people have been shot, and yet we don’t know their condition. Hold on a second, trying to get the information now. Three people shot in Brooklyn,” Kelly said.
Explaining why, in the middle of the Baltimore riots, Fox was breaking to a shooting all the way in New York City, Kelly said, “[W]e’ve been keeping our eyes open for any related incidents, as we saw back during Ferguson, violence did break out in several other cities besides. … We will work to find out whether this is in any way connected to what we’re seeing in Baltimore. Which we don’t have confirmed.”
As it turns out, six people were shot, two fatally, and the violence had nothing to do with Baltimore. It was most likely all gang-related, the New York Times reported Tuesday, citing police officials.
3. Chris Matthews: Blame the South
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews managed somehow to tie the protests and riots in Baltimore to right-to-work laws passed in Southern states.
“I wish the jobs hadn’t first gone South … because that’s where they went first. And they went to the right-to-work states, you know where they went, where the unions didn’t have any power. You could get people to work for nothing and the stuff wasn’t that good that was made down there,” he said Monday.
He recalled a time when people living in urban areas could get good jobs with short commutes.
“Where are we going to find manufacturing jobs, good old boys jobs, young men’s jobs where you go to work, you come back a little dirty, a little sweaty, but you’re proud of yourself for a hard day at the plant. My uncle, my grandfather grew up in north Philly,” he said. “I was living there, the neighborhood’s now African-American. But none of those jobs are there. They were there when I was there. You get on the subway, two stops away you had a real job. You get into Baltimore, you can’t find a job with a short commute. And that’s, to me, the problem that’s behind all of this.”
4. Rachel Maddow: Outta’ Control
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow suggested as the riots grew increasingly violent and bloody Monday night that the police may be a bit “out of control.”
In reference to claims police had returned bricks thrown at them by rioters by hurling them right back into crowds, Maddow said, “What’s striking about that report, because you saw it firsthand as a reporter … You don’t expect police to be throwing bricks.”
“But, if they’re picking up things that have been thrown at them and throwing them back, that implies to me, just as a lay observer, that the police feel, that the police are a little bit out of control, or that they may not necessarily be using disciplined police tactics,” she said.
5. Brooke Baldwin: Blame veterans?
CNN’s Brooke Baldwin in an interview with Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., wondered Monday whether potentially psychotic U.S. veterans-turned-police-officers are to blame for the nation’s policing problems.
“I was talking to a city councilman here last week who was saying, ‘Brooke, these people have to live in the communities. There’s no emotional, or there’s a lack of emotional investment,’ ” she said. “And a lot of these young people … and I love our nation’s veterans, but some of them are coming back from war, they don’t know the communities and they’re ready to do battle.”
She later tried to clarify her meaning in a tweet, saying “Folks. Please don’t misunderstand me. Dear friends/family of mine are veterans. I was repeating a concern vocalized to me lately. That’s it.”
She continued to walk back her apology, eventually issuing a full-throated apology on-air.
“I made a mistake yesterday. … I absolutely misspoke, I inartfully chose my words 100 percent and I just wish speaking to all of you this morning: I wholeheartedly retract what I said,” she said.
“And I’ve thought tremendously about this, and to our nation’s veterans, to you — this is just who I want to speak with this morning — I have the utmost respect for our men and women in uniform. And I wanted you to know that this morning, so to all of you, I owe a tremendous apology. I am truly sorry,” she said.
Fox News’ Shep Smith has joined others in criticizing how media has handled the riots, urging the hosts of the network’s “The Five” to look at the facts of the protests before “indicting” those involved.
“Well, you know, I’ve not been on the phone with them,” Smith said after he was asked by Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld where the activists’ parents were.
“But if we want to sit here and indict the civil rights community and indict the parents for what we’re watching right now, instead of for now, just covering what happens and then later talk about whose fault it is, because we don’t know whose fault it is,” Smith said, adding later that “Where are their parents?” isn’t a serious question to ask people covering the event.
