Hey, Journalists!
Up Your Game in Demonstration Coverage THE BET: I have a standing bet with several conservative friends. I bet that "when the truth comes out" (Har, har), it will be proven that most of the non-peaceful, burning-looting stuff was done by right wing radical groups like the Boogaloo bunch, The Proud Bois, and various "militias." But how much of that violence really happened? THE SEARCH: I spent almost an hour Google/Bing/Yahoo-ing trying to answer one question, "What proportion of the huge BLM demonstrations were actually violent?" VERY hard to find that information. Lots of folks; no smoke Then I saw this article on the NeimanLab site. ...One line caught my attention: "There’s been little coverage that quantifies the proportion of protests that are violent versus those that are peaceful." Duh. So yeah, journos, don't just aim our attention at the violence without including the vital context of how big a deal it ...