When I read this, I got the impression that NYTimes and WNYC had barely mentioned the knife. But when I clicked on the links to the NYTimes articles, it was mentioned prominently in the secondary headline, and in the body of the articles. During the WNYC interview mentioned, a recording was played of Mayor Eric Adams, saying “He [Derrell Mickles] was not shot for fare evasion. He was shot because he had a knife, and he went after the police officers after repeatedly asking him to put down the knife. I thought those officers responded accordingly. All shootings, you do an analysis to determine what we can do differently…”
And the WNYC interviewer, Brian Lehrer, also pointed to the issue of the knife in the program. The guest, Councilmember Tiffany Cabán, had a different perspective, and even if misinformed, isn’t one of the roles of media to air different sides of an issue? Or just one perspective, as occurs in places like North Korea? I think WNYC should have issued a correction to the statements of the guest and reporters that the knife in question was not legal on the subway.
I think the best part of Mike Pesca’s critique of the coverage is his acknowledgement that it was a complicated situation: “…something clearly went wrong when officers were in each other’s line of fire and bystanders caught stray bullets.”
Complex situations deserve complex coverage that is difficult to capture in a headline. But focusing on only the headlines in the NYtimes and not the body of the articles gives a distorted impression of the coverage. Focusing on one guest interviewed by WNYC and ignoring the inclusion of other views included in the program is similarly distorting.
I can understand Mike Pesca’s concern about assault in the NYC subway system. But from my safe distance in rural Illinois, it seems to me the NYtimes articles can be seen as highlighting “…the trade-offs and choices in this interaction”: stopping a knife wielding person at the risk of serious injuries to bystanders from police action. As mayor Adams said, and as quoted on WNYC: “All shootings, you do an analysis to determine what we can do differently.”
It’s common knowledge that most people only read the headlines. Not mentioning the knife is purposeful. In the old days when crime wasn’t a proxy for the injustice of the social order, a headline like “police shoot menacing man with knife” is a lot juicier. Now the crime isnt the juicy part, it’s the oppression that supposed to get us all riled up. NYTimes knows what it’s doing.
Gregory, you've misrepresented the article. The NYTimes wrote:
> But critics say that the fare evasion crackdown is misguided and too costly for what it recoups in revenue. And when it leads to a police encounter that escalates, as it did that Sunday, Sept. 15, the effort can quickly turn dangerous for the New Yorkers it is supposed to protect.
The last sentence, said with authority by the NYTimes, implies that the crackdown was the cause of the shooting. Not that a man broke a law twice in front of the police, brandished a knife, entered a subway car, threatened officers, asked them to shoot him, resisted arrest, and then charged the officers with a knife.
Mike Pesca's point stands. The NYTimes subtly tried to blame the NYPD, while doing the minimum factual reporting for plausible deniability. The history of the articles they wrote before attests to that bias.
And I'm saying this as someone who doesn't like the Police.
James, thanks for taking the time to share your perspective. I appreciate it, but I did not attempt to characterize either of the two NYTimes articles that Mike had mentioned and linked to. I responded to Mike's characterization of those articles + a WNYC program. When I read the articles and the interview transcripts, I found them to be quite different than the way he characterized them. The facts as you describe them were there. Different perspectives were there. Isn't that the job of the news media? Not to report the one true perspective, but to lay out facts and opinions and let the public debate and weigh in.
In many cases when I hear people claim "media bias" it seems to me these critics are complaining that the news media did not give their (the critics') perspective enough space or emphasis. For better or worse, good reporters attempt to give a range of perspectives. Limitations of space and time require reporters and editors to make choices which may be bias or appear to be bias to readers who wanted different choices made.
It is interesting that you point out sublety and the last sentence in one article, while the other person who commented on my comment wrote that "most people only read the headlines" and implied that NYTimes was intentionally misleading people by not mentioning the knife in the top headline, even though it was mentioned in the sub headline. Everyone has an opinion, and I think news outlets are challenged to navigate some middle ground that will sell enough subscriptions to keep them in business.
I hope you are also communicating your views about the situation to appropriate elected and other public officials. I'd guess that complaining about the nuances of NYTimes reporting may not be the most effective way to bring about the improved conditions in NYC that you seek. I lived for a few years near and in NYC. That is partly why I chose to live far, far away from either NYC, Chicago or similar places.
Middle class people in many urban areas don’t support mass transit for a reason no one wants to talk about. Black crime. Here I go anyway.
Young black men (15-34) are just 2% of the population and commit about half of the nation’s homicides. That’s a rate an astounding 50 times higher than the average American. Who wants to get on a bus or subway car (or allow their wife or daughter to do so) with such out of control individuals? Everyone knows this is true. We all watch the nightly news where the truth is revealed every single day and yet no one and especially no black politicians are even willing to discuss it. We need a serious national conversation about black crime and what is necessary to control it or attempts to increase investment in mass transit in our major metropolitan areas will continue to be fruitless.
As we all know, headline writers are different from the reporters on stories and often add or subtract a slant in the creation. NPR's staff to staff conversations are extremely annoying (as are NYT's - featuring some former NPR pdople). But the actual written story in the NYT is a pretty clear, straight report on the facts. But . . . it fails to look into several important issues - one of the people shot was an officer (under his arm) - presumably self inflicted. How???? And there is little specific analysis of how the two bystanders were shot. While it seems to be settled po!icy that people threatening with knives can/should be shot, it seems clear in this case that there are issues of basic training or equipment, as well as time and place considerations that should be applied. I agree that the streets and subways need more po!icing. But I don't want my kids killed by stray bullets from anyone's guns.
You say: “What were the trade-offs and choices in this interaction?”
This construct must be shifted beyond 'the activists' and media to consider - outward and upward to the public at large.
Only the activists are saying: "We need to De-police the society".
For the average public who have to enter confined spaces with 'shady individuals' they indeed are looking for the 'good guy with a gun'.
Keep going. We must also inspect the motivations of the 'Personal Injury Attorney'.
While they too (like the activists) scan all of the events where someone is made to 'bleed out' --they are looking for 'the police' involvement, for when a regular civilian does the shooting - they lose their possibility to collect funds from the a deep pocketed entity (ironically) who was charged with facilitating the security of the constituents.
Logically the personal injury attorneys should be against the 'de-policing activists' as a threat to their money flow. Instead they prove to be 'useful idiots' - the public hype that increases the payout of the settlements.
I think what really got me about this shooting is that most police departments would train officers in a way where they would have shot him much, much sooner. Generally cops are told not to get within 21 feet of a knife wielding suspect and there's almost a minute of the NYPD officers breaking this rule to try and take him down without shooting him. That's a major reason why the eventual shooting was so messy! The officers keep trying to corral him and keep him away from other people while using less lethal and only shoot him when there's absolutely no other option, which is what reformers have been calling for!
Well before commenting I went to the actual article and read it. The article itself seems fair in that it presents different sides of the incident. It does not say the shooting was wrong but did present concerns of those who were there during the shooting. It also presented information from those who felt the shooting was justified. This was not an investigative/getting to the truth article to me, but an overview look at the incident. And as far as concern about the headline, whether you considered it good or not, headlines are not written by the writer of the article, so that should not be used to judge the content of the article.
Well covered, and I’m sure “On the Media” will avoid covering the same ridiculously bad stream of politically motivated journalism, or make excuses for it.
What is the level of spinelessness of the progressive managers and editors at NYT, WNYC, NPR, that they allowed ‘woke’ and Free Palestine cult members to turn those legacy media organizations to far-left propaganda outlets? Do they not comprehend that they themselves caused a complete loss of credibility in their organizations and journalism at large? By late November 2023 I had cancelled WaPo, NYT, stopped listening and donating to NPR, after decades of daily consumption of their news. I removed every single public radio feed as well. I don’t believe any of these can be reformed any more. My hope is they burn to the ground and get reborn as something less disgustingly like Pravda or Der Stürmer.
When I read this, I got the impression that NYTimes and WNYC had barely mentioned the knife. But when I clicked on the links to the NYTimes articles, it was mentioned prominently in the secondary headline, and in the body of the articles. During the WNYC interview mentioned, a recording was played of Mayor Eric Adams, saying “He [Derrell Mickles] was not shot for fare evasion. He was shot because he had a knife, and he went after the police officers after repeatedly asking him to put down the knife. I thought those officers responded accordingly. All shootings, you do an analysis to determine what we can do differently…”
And the WNYC interviewer, Brian Lehrer, also pointed to the issue of the knife in the program. The guest, Councilmember Tiffany Cabán, had a different perspective, and even if misinformed, isn’t one of the roles of media to air different sides of an issue? Or just one perspective, as occurs in places like North Korea? I think WNYC should have issued a correction to the statements of the guest and reporters that the knife in question was not legal on the subway.
I think the best part of Mike Pesca’s critique of the coverage is his acknowledgement that it was a complicated situation: “…something clearly went wrong when officers were in each other’s line of fire and bystanders caught stray bullets.”
Complex situations deserve complex coverage that is difficult to capture in a headline. But focusing on only the headlines in the NYtimes and not the body of the articles gives a distorted impression of the coverage. Focusing on one guest interviewed by WNYC and ignoring the inclusion of other views included in the program is similarly distorting.
I can understand Mike Pesca’s concern about assault in the NYC subway system. But from my safe distance in rural Illinois, it seems to me the NYtimes articles can be seen as highlighting “…the trade-offs and choices in this interaction”: stopping a knife wielding person at the risk of serious injuries to bystanders from police action. As mayor Adams said, and as quoted on WNYC: “All shootings, you do an analysis to determine what we can do differently.”
It’s common knowledge that most people only read the headlines. Not mentioning the knife is purposeful. In the old days when crime wasn’t a proxy for the injustice of the social order, a headline like “police shoot menacing man with knife” is a lot juicier. Now the crime isnt the juicy part, it’s the oppression that supposed to get us all riled up. NYTimes knows what it’s doing.
Gregory, you've misrepresented the article. The NYTimes wrote:
> But critics say that the fare evasion crackdown is misguided and too costly for what it recoups in revenue. And when it leads to a police encounter that escalates, as it did that Sunday, Sept. 15, the effort can quickly turn dangerous for the New Yorkers it is supposed to protect.
The last sentence, said with authority by the NYTimes, implies that the crackdown was the cause of the shooting. Not that a man broke a law twice in front of the police, brandished a knife, entered a subway car, threatened officers, asked them to shoot him, resisted arrest, and then charged the officers with a knife.
The NYTimes own comment section notes this bias. Even Reddit says this article is slanted: https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/1j2hakh/one_hopped_turnstile_9_police_bullets_4_people/
Mike Pesca's point stands. The NYTimes subtly tried to blame the NYPD, while doing the minimum factual reporting for plausible deniability. The history of the articles they wrote before attests to that bias.
And I'm saying this as someone who doesn't like the Police.
James, thanks for taking the time to share your perspective. I appreciate it, but I did not attempt to characterize either of the two NYTimes articles that Mike had mentioned and linked to. I responded to Mike's characterization of those articles + a WNYC program. When I read the articles and the interview transcripts, I found them to be quite different than the way he characterized them. The facts as you describe them were there. Different perspectives were there. Isn't that the job of the news media? Not to report the one true perspective, but to lay out facts and opinions and let the public debate and weigh in.
In many cases when I hear people claim "media bias" it seems to me these critics are complaining that the news media did not give their (the critics') perspective enough space or emphasis. For better or worse, good reporters attempt to give a range of perspectives. Limitations of space and time require reporters and editors to make choices which may be bias or appear to be bias to readers who wanted different choices made.
It is interesting that you point out sublety and the last sentence in one article, while the other person who commented on my comment wrote that "most people only read the headlines" and implied that NYTimes was intentionally misleading people by not mentioning the knife in the top headline, even though it was mentioned in the sub headline. Everyone has an opinion, and I think news outlets are challenged to navigate some middle ground that will sell enough subscriptions to keep them in business.
I hope you are also communicating your views about the situation to appropriate elected and other public officials. I'd guess that complaining about the nuances of NYTimes reporting may not be the most effective way to bring about the improved conditions in NYC that you seek. I lived for a few years near and in NYC. That is partly why I chose to live far, far away from either NYC, Chicago or similar places.
Thanks, Mike. Keep telling like it is
Middle class people in many urban areas don’t support mass transit for a reason no one wants to talk about. Black crime. Here I go anyway.
Young black men (15-34) are just 2% of the population and commit about half of the nation’s homicides. That’s a rate an astounding 50 times higher than the average American. Who wants to get on a bus or subway car (or allow their wife or daughter to do so) with such out of control individuals? Everyone knows this is true. We all watch the nightly news where the truth is revealed every single day and yet no one and especially no black politicians are even willing to discuss it. We need a serious national conversation about black crime and what is necessary to control it or attempts to increase investment in mass transit in our major metropolitan areas will continue to be fruitless.
As we all know, headline writers are different from the reporters on stories and often add or subtract a slant in the creation. NPR's staff to staff conversations are extremely annoying (as are NYT's - featuring some former NPR pdople). But the actual written story in the NYT is a pretty clear, straight report on the facts. But . . . it fails to look into several important issues - one of the people shot was an officer (under his arm) - presumably self inflicted. How???? And there is little specific analysis of how the two bystanders were shot. While it seems to be settled po!icy that people threatening with knives can/should be shot, it seems clear in this case that there are issues of basic training or equipment, as well as time and place considerations that should be applied. I agree that the streets and subways need more po!icing. But I don't want my kids killed by stray bullets from anyone's guns.
You say: “What were the trade-offs and choices in this interaction?”
This construct must be shifted beyond 'the activists' and media to consider - outward and upward to the public at large.
Only the activists are saying: "We need to De-police the society".
For the average public who have to enter confined spaces with 'shady individuals' they indeed are looking for the 'good guy with a gun'.
Keep going. We must also inspect the motivations of the 'Personal Injury Attorney'.
While they too (like the activists) scan all of the events where someone is made to 'bleed out' --they are looking for 'the police' involvement, for when a regular civilian does the shooting - they lose their possibility to collect funds from the a deep pocketed entity (ironically) who was charged with facilitating the security of the constituents.
Logically the personal injury attorneys should be against the 'de-policing activists' as a threat to their money flow. Instead they prove to be 'useful idiots' - the public hype that increases the payout of the settlements.
Democrats like crime.
I think what really got me about this shooting is that most police departments would train officers in a way where they would have shot him much, much sooner. Generally cops are told not to get within 21 feet of a knife wielding suspect and there's almost a minute of the NYPD officers breaking this rule to try and take him down without shooting him. That's a major reason why the eventual shooting was so messy! The officers keep trying to corral him and keep him away from other people while using less lethal and only shoot him when there's absolutely no other option, which is what reformers have been calling for!
Well before commenting I went to the actual article and read it. The article itself seems fair in that it presents different sides of the incident. It does not say the shooting was wrong but did present concerns of those who were there during the shooting. It also presented information from those who felt the shooting was justified. This was not an investigative/getting to the truth article to me, but an overview look at the incident. And as far as concern about the headline, whether you considered it good or not, headlines are not written by the writer of the article, so that should not be used to judge the content of the article.
In today's political environment, truth means nothing. It's what kind of ammo does this give my side.
Thank god! Instead of a comedy routine, like on the Gist, Mike’s kicking the NYT’s ass!!
Nothing else goin’ on in the world, eh? Glorious Leader will approve? Or at least, perhaps not disapprove? Or not? Who knows?
Well covered, and I’m sure “On the Media” will avoid covering the same ridiculously bad stream of politically motivated journalism, or make excuses for it.
What is the level of spinelessness of the progressive managers and editors at NYT, WNYC, NPR, that they allowed ‘woke’ and Free Palestine cult members to turn those legacy media organizations to far-left propaganda outlets? Do they not comprehend that they themselves caused a complete loss of credibility in their organizations and journalism at large? By late November 2023 I had cancelled WaPo, NYT, stopped listening and donating to NPR, after decades of daily consumption of their news. I removed every single public radio feed as well. I don’t believe any of these can be reformed any more. My hope is they burn to the ground and get reborn as something less disgustingly like Pravda or Der Stürmer.