When The New York Times Again Gets it Wrong
Traditional Tradesman, by the way, you may appreciate this aside on this shooting in New York City, and an ongoing problem with The New York Times seemingly bending the facts to scream, “Injustice!”
Never underestimate the power of sending sending a comment to a newspaper. The New York Times changed their headline April 4 after myself — and presumably others — told them how ridiculous, misleading, and unfair to police their original headline was.
Imagine, if you were just scanning headlines, and saw the following:
Original (false) headline: “Police Fatally Shoot a Brooklyn Man After Falsely Believing He Had A Gun”
Current (accurate) headline: “Police Fatally Shoot a Brooklyn Man, Saying They Thought He Had a Gun”
ARTICLE:
My Published Comment:
Just once, I’d like to see the NY Times mention how many people are threatened by a weapon per year. Here’s the data from the FBI: “57,180 officers were victims of line-of-duty assaults … firearms [are] 4.2 percent of incidents.” That’s nearly 2,400 firearm-related assaults. It’s also true that a small fraction of police are shot and killed, but it’s possibly because they’re well trained at defending themselves AND other people. I’m subscribing to the NY Times, but probably won’t for much longer unless you report about the threats officers face and give some honest reporting.
The police TRULY BELIEVED it was a gun (not “falsely believed” as your headline says). The NY Times even wrote, “Five officers — three of them in street clothes, two in uniform — were responding to three 911 calls about a man threatening people with a silver gun … A law enforcement official who listened to one of the calls said a woman was frantically reporting that a man was pointing a gun at people.”