The newest member of Outkick The Coverage blog team Jason Whitlock on Thursday delivered a brutal assessment of cable news networks. In defense of One America News (OAN), he wrote that cable news is guilty of peddling dangerous and divisive conspiracy theories.
OAN has been in the news with Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy having said he enjoys the news source, which was condemned by other media as anti-Black Lives Matter. Whitlock said he had gotten tweets accusing OAN of peddling "dangerous, irresponsible and racially divisive conspiracy theories." He turns it around on the left-stream media and asks, "Isn’t that what cable news networks do?"
Whitlock looked up the definitions of "conspiracy theory" to make sure he understood it correctly and found this explanation: "A belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for a circumstance or event."
Then he applied this to how the leftist-dominated sports media treats Colin Kaepernick: "The entire Colin Kaepernick-blackballed narrative is a racially divisive conspiracy theory spread by the mainstream sports media. NFL owners did not collude to keep Kaepernick out of the league."
Kaepernick’s absence from the NFL, Whitlock asserted, was due to his own "boneheaded decisions, overvaluing of his worth, race-baiting girlfriend and lack of genuine desire to play kept him out of the NFL. There’s no mystery to what happened to Kap. The headache of Kap outweighed his performance."
Nessa Diab, the girlfriend whom Whitlock described as “Yoko Ono,” made matters worse by comparing Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti to a slave owner and team legend Ray Lewis to a "pet slave."
Diab’s tweet was tantamount to Kaepernick’s retirement announcement and "a clear sign he didn’t want any team to sign him," Whitlock contended. "Kap’s retirement ceremony came two years later when Roger Goodell arranged a workout for Kap in Atlanta. Kap brought cameras, a Kunta Kinte T-shirt and a very bad attitude to the workout he subsequently skipped in favor of a grandstanding game of catch with friends."
While the vast majority of sports media has portrayed Kaepernick as a hero, Whitlock said the perpetual free agent doesn’t even want to play football because "he prefers martyrdom."
But if the media shed that truth on the matter, they would generate fewer internet clicks and lower ratings. So they debate the conspiracy theory founded on the assertion that white NFL owners are racists. It's a farce, Whitlock wrote.
The liberal media have been so wrapped up in conspiracy myths that it won't tell you the NFL is now hyping a Kaepernick return to play because it is driven by the fear of social-media backlash and "the unified brigade of race-baiting mainstream media conspiracy theorists."
Nor will the media establishment tell the truth about Black Lives Matter. Whitlock said virtually everything about Black Lives Matter is fraudulent. "It should be called White Perps Matter. BLM is unconcerned with black life. Its concern is for white perpetrators. Black life only has value to this fraudulent, anti-black, political movement when the black life is taken by a white assailant.
"BLM is founded on the conspiracy theory that police are executing a mass-murder plot against black men and government is complicit. None of it is true."
Whitlock added that black men are as likely to be killed by lightning as by police and 1,000 times more likely to be killed by another black man as police. Yet he's never heard of an alleged thought leader mention talking with their kids about reducing the lethal animus between black men.
"Are we sure OAN is the lone media outlet propagating dangerous, irresponsible and racially divisive conspiracy theories?" the host asked, "Or are these theories the lifeblood of the modern mainstream media?"
Whitlock also accused social media of moving the journalism goal post from "inform to inflame" and says the emotional fires engulfing America should come as no surprise.
