The Media Guide to Shooting Joggers

I did not think I could hate The New York Times more.

But thanks to Gregory Mantell’s amazing new book, “Special Victim Status, The Era of Woke Journalism,” I do! Mantell’s carefully researched book provides hundreds of new facts about the press’s fanatical propaganda on race.

Coincidentally, this week is the four-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death, and I think the traditional gift is paper. You know what would make a great anniversary gift? This book.

Nothing shocked me more than Chapter 3 on the Ahmaud Arbery case.

If you follow the news, you know that Arbery was the innocent black jogger chased down by three racist rednecks in Georgia and shot dead merely for “jogging while black.”

Arbery’s killers, Travis and Gregory McMichael, were convicted in about six minutes and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Plus 20 years, just to be safe. Eight months later, they got bonus life sentences in separate federal hate crimes prosecutions. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan Jr., who happened to be there, got 35 years (state) plus life (federal).

Quite a turnabout for a case that three prosecutors refused to take after concluding there was no crime. But our media can perform miracles!

Mantell contrasts the media’s treatment of Arbery’s killing with their take on the murder of Christopher Lane, a white jogger shot and killed by a black man in Oklahoma.

Arbery: RACIST HATE CRIME, COMMITTED BY HATEFUL RACISTS!

Lane:

— “the simplest of motives — boredom.” —The Washington Post

— “a tale about teenagers from broken families, lives complicated by drugs and poverty, who seemed idle.” —The New York Times

The facts of the Lane shooting are pretty simple:

Lane, a 22-year-old Australian studying at East Central University in Oklahoma on a baseball scholarship, went for an afternoon run on Aug. 16, 2013, in a town that’s 2.5% black, and was shot in the back by a black teen, Chancey Luna, driving by in a car with two other boys. Lane died, blood gushing from his mouth, before the ambulance arrived.

Days earlier, one of the teens charged with Lane’s murder tweeted, “With my n*ggas when it’s time to start taken life’s.”

The facts of Arbery’s shooting are also simple, only made complicated by the media’s lies.

Mantell writes:

“The McMichaels said they attempted to make a citizen’s arrest to take Arbery into custody [after catching him again trespassing in neighbor Larry English’s house late at night]. Bryan, who followed behind the McMichaels in his own truck, caught part of the incident on his cellphone camera. In the video, Arbery punched Travis, and they fought over the gun; during the struggle, Travis shot and killed Arbery.”

But “from the start, both the Times and the Post pushed the false narrative by Arbery’s family and attorney (who were not present during the incident) that Arbery had simply been out jogging through the neighborhood …”

Indeed, a Times reporter wrote that “even if Arbery had been trespassing in the house, it doesn’t justify his shooting.” (Say, can we get Malachy Browne to write an article on Officer Michael Byrd’s deadly shooting of Ashli Babbitt for trespassing at the Capitol on Jan. 6?)

Mantell notes a few omissions from the Times’ and Washington Post’s “jogging while black” accounts:

— “Convenience store employees reported Arbery was known as ‘the jogger’ because he would stretch and pretend to warm up outside the store and then run in and out quickly, stealing stuff. … The employees said they tried to have police give the man a criminal trespass warning, but he always ran off before they could.”

— “On August 21, 2018, according to Burke County witness reports and Burke County Sheriff bodycam video, a black woman who was married to a sheriff deputy called for help after seeing Arbery in her backyard and looking in her car windows. Sheriff deputies also later mentioned he was trying to steal a dog from the same house … When officers arrived to give Arbery a warning about criminal trespassing, Arbery claimed he had been out jogging and threatened to ‘whoop the officer’s ass.’”

— “On October 23, 2018, a black woman called Burke County Sheriff deputies when she saw Arbery go into a vacant mobile home across from her house … When the sheriff arrived, Arbery ran away from deputies and falsely claimed he had been out jogging.”

— “Arbery was arrested and charged with ‘misdemeanor obstruction for running when given lawful commands to stop.’”

Following his pattern, before “jogging” the night he was shot, Arbery had apparently been burgling English’s house.

But “both the Times and the Post (and other media) continued to falsely report claims that nothing had ever been taken from English’s house in which Arbery had been caught on video trespassing on multiple occasions.”

In fact, Mantell says, “the Post and the Times knew about several 911 calls made in October and November 2019 which directly contradicted those claims … In one [of several calls] English told the dispatcher, ‘we had some stuff stolen from there’ in the last incident … The first time they stole everything out of the boat ‘that wasn’t tied down.’ The next night, November 18, 2019, English called 911 again, reporting that the same black guy who was there about a week or a week and a half ago was back.”

The media simply treated as gospel English’s post-hoc, not-under-oath, scared-stiff statement that nothing had been stolen. More likely, English noticed what had happened to the Atlanta Wendy’s where police had shot a black man in the parking lot in June 2020. (Reuters: “Protesters burn down Wendy’s in Atlanta after police shooting.”)

Tellingly, English “admitted in court he had been greatly troubled by death threats he received.”

No matter. The only relevant fact to the media was this:

“[T]he neighbor Bryan accused Travis McMichael of calling Arbery a ‘fucking n*gger’ after killing him — and when racist messages were found on Travis’ cellphone — both papers devoted breathless headlines and stories to the news. This was reported as absolute proof that the killing of Arbery was racially motivated.”

But, oddly, the media had zero interest in the racist tweets posted by James Edwards, one of the black teens involved in Lane’s shooting, such as:

“90% of white ppl are nasty. #HATE THEM.”

“Ayeee I knocced out 5 woods since Zimmerman court!:) lol sht ima keep sleepin sht!#ayeeee.” (“Wood” is a racial epithet for a white person.)

Another discrepancy noted by Mantell:

“[W]hile the Times pointed out that Lane’s killer had white friends, it didn’t worry about whether the McMichaels or Bryan had any black friends, though Travis McMichael had risked his own life years earlier to save a black man from drowning (according to a later "48 Hours” report).“

Yeah, "later” — after the media’s propaganda campaign had successfully led to multiple life sentences.

There’s much, much more in this chapter alone, but I’ll end with one more proof of what Mantell means by “special victim status”:

“As of January 15, 2023, Arbery was mentioned in 773 articles in the Post and 955 in the Times. … [O]n May 8, 2020 … the Times ran 14 articles and the Post ran 13 articles about Arbery on that single day. That was more coverage than the Times and the Post gave to Lane’s killing in two years — from his murder to the sentencing of his killers.”

The Patriot Post® · The Media Guide to Shooting Joggers