As PBS NewsHour has run segments last week several times promoting the Democrat party's agenda on gun control, co-host Geoff Bennett on Thursday also promoted a PBS special on survivors of gun-related violence which also squeezed in a liberal agenda.
In the report, Ricochet: An American Trauma, which can be seen online, William Brangham not only spoke with several people who had lost loved ones from either murder or suicide by gun. The PBS reporter also included a clip of University of Maryland professor Joseph Richardson, Jr., who used some of his time to push liberal agenda items.
Even though letting criminals out of prison in recent years, as well as a scaling back of police actions in response to media pressure, have heavily factored into recent increases in violent crime, Professor Richardson complained about "mass incarceration" and "hyper-policing." He also called for more programs to address poverty issues like health care:
JOSEPH RICHARDSON, JR., UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: We can prevent gun violence. We know that we can prevent it. There have been numerous studies that have been done which suggest the ways that we can prevent it -- by addressing concentrated poverty -- by addressing the dysfunction in schools, mass incarceration, hyper-policing of communities, food deserts, medical deserts, providing access to quality health care. All of these things can contribute to reducing the level of gun violence that we have in our communities.
Toward the end of the show, Sandy Phillips -- whose daughter was murdered in a mass shooting -- brought up the issue of shootings that occur in predominantly black neighborhoods, which was followed by a soundbite of Ryane Nickens, who also had a family member who was murdered. Nickens accused the media of ignoring black shooting victims:
RYANE NICKENS, FOUNDER OF THE REARON CENTER: Mass shootings where the victims are white and the shooter is white, that's an American problem. Community violence in black and brown communities that has been happening for four or five decades, that's just a black and brown -- that's just a Hispanic and black African American problem.
Richardson was then given another soundbite in which he suggested that America does not care about black victims:
Mass shootings happen every day in America. There are four or more people who are shot every day, and they typically happen in cities with populations of black people who are the victims or survivors of mass shootings. I'm definitely disturbed by it and the ways that the media often neglects to illuminate black suffering in similar ways and to provide attention that's given to it almost as if you deserve to be shot, right? And who deserves to be shot in this country?
The PBS special did not find anything positive to say about guns, like finding examples of the many times guns are used to prevent or fight off violent criminals.
Even though murders and other crimes dropped substantially between 1994 and 2014 as the U.S. locked up criminals more aggressively, no attention was given to the issue of liberals hindering the criminal justice system from punishing criminals adequately in recent years, or the media whipping up hostility to police officers over the past decade and hurting morale.
This PBS NewsHour Special Report was funded by Consumer Cellular as well as viewers like you.
Partial transcript follows:
PBS NewsHour Special Report
Ricochet: An American Trauma
(35 minutes in)
RYANE NICKENS, FOUNDER OF THE REARON CENTER: Most people aren't born killers. They are created. We have created killers in America. We have done that, and they have been created by circumstance.
JOSEPH RICHARDSON, JR., UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: We can prevent gun violence. We know that we can prevent it. There have been numerous studies that have been done which suggest the ways that we can prevent it -- by addressing concentrated poverty -- by addressing the dysfunction in schools, mass incarceration, hyper-policing of communities, food deserts, medical deserts, providing access to quality health care. All of these things can contribute to reducing the level of gun violence that we have in our communities.
(...)
(48 minutes in)
SANDY PHILLIPS, MOTHER OF AURORA SHOOTING VICTIM: Lonnie and I have always tried to build a bridge between the mass shootings to the individual shootings that -- as a friend of mine calls them, "slow motion mass shootings" -- that happen every day in America.
BRANGHAM: And that get no attention.
PHILLIPS: No attention, and often no investigation. But you hear these stories, and then you start talking to doctors and lawyers and other people, so you're -- it's not just the survivor base, it's the other people that are in that ripple. And they start telling you about, "Oh, yeah, we have eight- and nine-year-olds coming into the ER every weekend that are so traumatized and so deeply scarred that they can't function." We have the collective that live in America and are being slaughtered every day that nobody is paying attention to, and it's like this is a traumatized community.
NICKENS: Mass shootings where the victims are white and the shooter is white, that's an American problem. Community violence in black and brown communities that has been happening for four or five decades, that's just a black and brown -- that's just a Hispanic and black African American problem.
RICHARDSON: Mass shootings happen every day in America. There are four or more people who are shot every day, and they typically happen in cities with populations of black people who are the victims or survivors of mass shootings. I'm definitely disturbed by it and the ways that the media often neglects to illuminate black suffering in similar ways and to provide attention that's given to it almost as if you deserve to be shot, right? And who deserves to be shot in this country?
(...)
PHILLIPS: I'm a little tired of America building memorials to gun violence survivors and victims and not changing the laws that would prevent it.
