Why the MSM hates new media: Alabama edition

when a mere blog­ger is the one ask­ing the ques­tions that by all rights you’d expect to be asked by actual reporters and edi­tors in news­rooms in Wash­ing­ton and New York – you can be excused for think­ing there’s some­thing badly out-​of-​whack in the media uni­verse.

Robert Stacy McCain May 29^th 2011

Media Bias is mostly made up of sins of omission

DaT­e­chGuy: April 18^th 2011

The NBC News edit­ing of the Zim­mer­man 911 call really makes me won­der how many times in the past sev­eral decades some­thing like this hap­pened and we never knew any­thing about it.

Jeff John­son Instapun­dit April 10^th

There are a lot of flags fly­ing over “edit­gate” but for my money the biggest story of the day comes from far­ther south.

On April 10^th J. at 5:54 a.m. J Chris­t­ian Adams posted this story at PJ Media:

Stokes said he looked back in his rear-​view as he pulled away and noticed the biker rolling in the high­way. “He either tried to jump in the back of the truck or onto the trailer and some­how slipped.”

Stokes said when he noticed the injured man flail­ing in the road­way he stopped, wor­ried about leav­ing the scene of an acci­dent. Stokes said he was get­ting out of his truck to go check on Clay when a woman in a red Jeep pulled along­side and shouted a warn­ing: “You bet­ter get out of here — they’ve got guns.” That’s when Stokes looked back down the high­way and some the motor­cy­cle gang — 30 or 40 bikes strong — headed his way. “I jumped back in the truck and took off until I could find a busy inter­sec­tion and that’s where I stopped.”

Stokes said he and Cooper were imme­di­ately sur­rounded by a gang of black bik­ers, all with black ban­danas cov­er­ing the bot­tom half of their faces.

The gang forced him out of the truck and com­menced their revenge attack. “After I saw the knife and then felt the stab­bings I fell to the ground and played dead — I think that may have saved my life,” he said.

Adams is quot­ing Scott Boyd’s story from the weekly Macon Bea­con. The only paper that decided a gang of 30 to 40 bik­ers sur­round­ing and stab­bing a trucker at an inter­sec­tion was newsworthy:

Boyd tells me he con­tacted the crime beat reporter at the Birm­ing­ham News and told her about his story. “Not news­wor­thy,” was her response. Boyd also tells me that law enforce­ment offi­cials told Boyd they “don’t mess with the Out­casts of Alabama.”

The motor­cy­cle gang is black, the dri­ver who was stabbed was white. Adams continued:

Let’s see if the attack by a black motor­cy­cle gang on an Alabama high­way in broad day­light gets any more media or law enforce­ment atten­tion now that the infor­ma­tion is here for the ask­ing. I won’t hold my breath.

Lo and behold guess at 3:02 p.m. the same day guess what story has sud­denly become news­wor­thy to the Birm­ing­ham News.

Police probe March stab­bing in Jef­fer­son County

Adamsville police are inves­ti­gat­ing a March 24 road-​rage inci­dent in which a Mis­sis­sippi man was stabbed, author­i­ties said.

The story con­tains this inter­est­ing quote:

The motor­cy­clists were mem­bers of the Out­casts of Alabama Motor­cy­cle Club based in Besse­mer. Author­i­ties said they’ve never had any inci­dents of vio­lence from the social motor­cy­cle club.

Well per­haps that why law enforce­ment offi­cials “don’t mess with the Out­casts of Alabama” because they are so peace­ful.

This morn­ing Adams noted the sud­den volte-​face by the Birm­ing­ham paper and a bit of defense from the edi­tor on their pre­vi­ous inac­tion:

Now that the new media has shamed Mr. Clark’s news­pa­per, the Birm­ing­ham News is pre­tend­ing the call from Boyd never hap­pened. It did. They might have “looked into it,” but the look lasted about three sec­onds and then Carol Robin­son of the Birm­ing­ham News decided not to cover the stab­bing, over a week ago. A weekly paper in Mis­sis­sippi and the new con­ser­v­a­tive media at PJ Media cov­ered events in Alabama bet­ter and quicker than the Birm­ing­ham News.

And this is an excel­lent illus­tra­tion of the impor­tance of blogs even on a smaller level.

We think about the the NBC’s and the New York Times as spin­ning an agenda, we rail about the Jon Stew­arts and Stephen Col­berts and the false nar­ra­tives, but in truth to most of the coun­try the NYT is a paper they will never read in their lives and Stew­art and Col­bert are so insignif­i­cant that a 53-​year-​old move that’s been avail­able on video for decades not only beat them 3 – 1 in the rat­ing last week but took them in the 18 – 49 year old demo­graphic.

But for every NYT there are dozens of Birm­ing­ham News’ unin­ter­ested in vio­lence by Biker Gangs if they are of the wrong color. For every Jon Stew­art there are count­less Worces­ter Telegrams who find threats of vio­lence and arson triv­ial if directed at pro-​life cen­ters and for every CNN there is a slew of Tor­rance Daily Breezes who don’t find the actions or pro­nounce­ments of major party con­gres­sional can­di­dates worth their time.

Dur­ing his talk in Lex­ing­ton Mass. last year Andrew Bre­it­bart urged those in atten­dance to carry a cam­era and report and even if it was no more than a Kinder­garten teacher push­ing an agenda to send him the story and he would make it national. If you are a blog­ger will­ing to report on those local sto­ries and pro­mote them up the blog ecosys­tem you have the power to make a dif­fer­ence. Bre­it­bart under­stood this and so does every mem­ber of the MSM with an agenda who dis­misses blog­gers and tweeters.

That more than any­thing else is why they hate you and fear you.

Update: Related thoughts on media hatred and con­tain­ment from Ed Driscoll and J. Chris­t­ian Adams

Update 2: Bill Quick points out the scope of the NYT goes beyond it’s print edi­tion, fair enough but sto­ries nation­wide get pro­moted because they appear else­where and get trac­tion thus mak­ing blog­gers even more impor­tant and pow­er­ful on the local level.

It’s why they want Rush to shut up too, how many sto­ries before the rise of the net did he push that the MSM wanted the world to for­get or ignore?