(Media Silence After DAPL Police Literally Blew Woman’s Arm up with Grenade

[Banglar Bir]

(ANTIMEDIA) North Dakota — An unprecedented militarized crackdown took place Sunday night at the construction site of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), located just outside the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota.

The month-long standoff between Native American “water protectors” and militarized law enforcement saw a dramatic escalation as water cannons, tear gas, rubber bullets, concussion grenades, armored vehicles, and other “less than lethal” weapons were used against the protesters after they cleared an abandoned vehicle that acted as a roadblock on a nearby bridge.

This unprecedented crackdown left hundreds of protesters wounded. According to an official statement from the Standing Rock Medic & Healer Council:

“Approximately 300 injuries were identified, triaged, assessed and treated by our physicians, nurses, paramedics and integrative healers working in collaboration with local emergency response. These 300 injuries were the direct result of excessive force by police over the course of 10 hours. At least 26 seriously injured people had to be evacuated by ambulance to 3 area hospitals.”

Many of the injured suffered from hypothermia after law enforcement doused protesters with water cannons despite sub-freezing temperatures.

But perhaps the most egregious act was when a concussion grenade fired by police struck a woman in the arm, tearing it apart. In photos taken after the incident, bone could be seen where the flesh was blown apart (photos are not included because they are too graphic). Her arm may need to be amputated due to the injuries.


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Chemical/"less lethal" munitions fired at #NoDAPL water protectors by Morton County Sheriff and supporting agencies Sun night/Monday morning

9:45 AM - 22 Nov 2016

In light of this overwhelmingly violent crackdown by U.S. law enforcement, one would expect the media to be up in arms with their coverage of Standing Rock. I mean, chemical weapons (tear gas), grenades, assault weapons, and street tanks are being deployed against peaceful Americans in America. But the media’s coverage is apathetic. In fact, most outlets are downplaying the violence there.

Here’s a rundown of some of the mainstream news coverage put together by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR):

“The New York Times (11/21/16) gets a failing grade for its headline over a report on escalating police violence against Native American activists and others defending the Missouri River against the Dakota Access Pipeline:

16 Arrested at North Dakota Pipeline Protest

“Sorry, New York Times – when more than 470 people have been arrested opposing the pipeline since August, that’s not the news. Nor did the print edition headline — ‘16 Arrested at North Dakota Pipeline Protest as Tensions Continue’ — add anything.

“No, the news in the story came in the second paragraph, where reporter Jonah Engel Bromwich wrote that ‘officials also defended their use of fire hoses against protesters the night before, despite the below-freezing weather.’

“Perhaps Times editors thought that wasn’t news, because police use of ‘water cannons’ against demonstrators was mentioned in an AP report that ran on the Times website the day before (11/20/16) under the anodyne headline ‘Police, Protesters Face Off at Dakota Access Pipeline.’ If that was the case, editors could have found more pressing information than the arrest count in the eighth paragraph of the latest story:

“Dallas Goldtooth, a spokesman for the Indigenous Environmental Network, said in a phone interview on Monday that the Oceti Sakowin medical team, which had been working in tandem with medics from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, had reported that nearly 200 people were injured and 12 people were hospitalized for head injuries. One protester went into cardiac arrest and was revived by the medic team, he said.

“NPR’s website (11/21/16) likewise reported the story of police violence leading to widespread injuries under an innocuous headline: ‘Police, Protesters Clash Near Dakota Access Pipeline Route,’ as did ABC News (11/21/16) with its ‘Hundreds of Dakota Access Protesters Clash With Police.’ This ‘clash’ framing — also utilized in headlines on CBS (11/20/16) andCNN(11/20/16) — implies a parity between police in military vehicles, employing water cannon, tear gas, pepper spray, rubber-coated bullets and concussion grenades (one of which may have cost an activist her arm), on the one hand, and basically unarmed civilians on the other. (Police say one officer was hit in the head by a thrown rock.)

[…]

“The Washington Post (11/21/16) got the news into the headline, but framed it from a police perspective: ‘Police Defend Use of Water Cannons on Dakota Access Protesters in Freezing Weather.’”

As FAIR succinctly concluded:

“One almost gets the sense that editors writing headlines like these have enlisted themselves on the sheriff’s team, waving spectators away with a ‘nothing to see here, folks.’”

http://theantimedia.org/media-silence-dapl-police-grenade/

 

[Banglar Bir]

November 25, 2016 | ANTIMEDIA
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ANTIMEDIA) The corporate media has been running damage control since its months-long promotion of Hillary Clinton failed to seal the Democratic nominee’s ascension to the White House.

Mainstream outlets have made a concerted effort to perpetuate the narrative that fake news cost Hillary Clinton the election. In fact, CNN inadvertently did our advertising for us when they discussed the “rise of [the] anti-media’” recently.


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But for all the time behemoth outlets have dedicated to smearing the growing independent media circuit, this week they proved they should probably exert a little more effort improving their own operations.

On Thursday, a Twitter user posted a screenshot that claimed to prove CNN aired thirty minutes of hardcore **** in place of a portion of its Anthony Bourdain special “Parts Unknown.” The Independent was the first mainstream media outlet to report the rumor as fact:

“Though viewers were tuning in for a new episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, the show’s title took on an entirely new meaning when the scheduled programming was replaced with explicit material starring transsexual pornstar Riley Quinn.”

http://cdn.theantimedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/cnn-****-2.jpgSave
Despite this “news” being based on one Twitter user’s image upload, (@solikearose’s account is now private) — and the fact it was denied by CNN and RCN, the cable provider — mainstream media outlets began regurgitating this story at an alarming rate.

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First the Independent, then Fox News, ABC, International Business Times, AOL, Esquire, Mashable, New York Daily News, Maxim, the Daily Mail, News.com, the Daily Caller, the New York Post, and many other “credible” news sites reported the rumor as fact. The Verge pointed out that while it’s definitely possible **** aired on CNN (according to a statement from the network), “that still doesn’t really verify that anything occurred.” Many of the outlets that rushed to report the story failed to obtain comments from CNN or RCN — at least until after the fact.

Mashable (a harsh critic of so-called fake news on Facebook), like many other mainstream outlets, initially reported the rumor as truth with a clickbait headline, then quickly changed the title on their website after the story was outed as probably false.


Their headline was changed from “30 minutes of hardcore **** just aired on CNN, apparently,” to “Did 30 minutes of hardcore **** air on CNN Thursday night?” The original false report was apparently deleted from their Facebook page, and the new updated version was posted in its place — without a retraction or apology.

Most news outlets have now changed their headlines, updated the articles, and removed their previous Facebook posts of the rumor.

In another example of media hypocrisy, earlier today ABC published an (unsubstantiated) article claiming the fake news “epidemic” is part of a Russian propaganda campaign. A few hours later, an ABC affiliate published the CNN **** rumor story as fact.

Ironically, in addition to Mashable and ABC, many of the news outlets listed above have aggressively promoted the mainstream narrative that “fake news” is a threat to American democracy, continually publishing fear mongering stories apparently intended to discredit alternative sources of news.

Perhaps these publications will be reconsidering that sentiment after participating in the so-called “fake news” frenzy themselves.

As Mashable recently said:

“Fake news is like the living dead of new media. It is unkillable.”

Indeed.