Media Stereotyping and Propaganda

Joe Fitzgerald says, "A bad cop doesn’t mean all cops are bad." (Joe Fitzgerald, "It’s a sad joke that society gives benefit of doubt to lawbreakers," August 13, 2015, Boston Herald) His observations on distorted reporting are accurate and remains a serious threat to freedom in this country. Yet there is one group who never gets the same benefit of the doubt. Anyone with "a history of mental illness" is understood to be guilty of a criminal accusation because prosecutors, police, journalists and defense lawyers believe mental illness causes crime.This pervasive misguided belief additionally slurs anyone who has ever been accused of mental illness. This is the exception to the Fitzgerald doctrine.  

[From article]
A bad cop doesn’t mean all cops are bad.
Yet the job they’re asked to do on our behalf becomes potentially more lethal as society begins giving the benefit of the doubt to the lawbreaker, not the law enforcer.
[. . .]
To hear TV commentators repeatedly refer to Brown as “an unarmed black man shot by the police” is to understand how we are being manipulated.
There’s no mention of how he had just menaced an Asian shopkeeper, stealing his merchandise, and was now wrestling for control of an officer’s pistol when he was shot.
If Michael Brown had properly submitted to the officer’s authority, which we are all expected to do, he would be alive today.
That’s also true of Eric Garner, who died resisting arresting officers in New York.
It made no difference that it would have been his 32nd arrest; his family was awarded $5.9 million.
What will happen to this society if those charged with maintaining the law are resisted by those who are subsequently hailed and rewarded for defying it?
When Boston police officer John Moynihan was shot in the face five months ago in Roxbury, his assailant, an ex-con with a violent history, was immediately gunned down, prompting residents to gather and chant, “Black lives matter!”
What a joke. But if we don’t come to our senses soon, the joke’s on us.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/joe_fitzgerald/2015/08/fitzgerald_it_s_a_sad_joke_that_society_gives_benefit

Fitzgerald: It’s a sad joke that society gives benefit of doubt to lawbreakers
Thursday, August 13, 2015
By: Joe Fitzgerald
Boston Herald