Jena Sixed

Listen (RealAudio)

The following USA Today article, published on September 6, 2007, is typical of the coverage on the now-infamous Jena 6 case:

For a year, Jena (pronounced JEEN-uh), a poor mining community of 3,000 people, has been embroiled in racial tensions pitting the black community against white school officials and a white prosecutor. It began last August when a black student asked at an assembly if black students could sit under a tree where white students usually sat. The next day, two nooses hung from the tree.

Black parents were outraged by the symbolism, recalling the mob lynchings of black men. They complained to school officials. District superintendent Roy Breithaupt and the school board gave three-day suspensions to the white students who hung the nooses, overruling the recommendation of then-principal Scott Windham that the students be expelled. . . .

In November, an unknown arsonist burned down part of the high school.

Over the next three days, fights erupted between black and white students on and off school grounds. Police arrested a white man for punching a black teen. He pleaded guilty to simple battery.

The skirmishes culminated with a fight in which the six black teens, star players on Jena's champion football team, were charged as adults with attempted murder. The white student they're accused of beating, Justin Barker, 17, was knocked unconscious and suffered cuts and bruises. He was treated at an emergency room but not hospitalized.

Mychal Bell, 17, was convicted in May of a reduced charge, aggravated second-degree battery, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

Since then, charges against two youths have been reduced.

This seems like straightforward reporting of the facts. However, an October 24, 2007, Christian Science Monitor article by Craig Franklin, a longtime resident of Jena and assistant editor of The Jena Times, is throwing cold water on the media-induced racial firestorm spreading nationwide from the small Louisiana town. Franklin, who has covered the story since it broke in August, and his wife, who teaches at Jena High School, claim the mainstream media have distorted at least twelve vital facts surrounding the incident, fabricating and even inciting racial division where little or none existed. Franklin's twelve media myths range from the "whites only" tree (students of all races were free to sit under it) to the attack on the white students being linked to the nooses (none of the eyewitness testimony mentioned them).

How could professional journalists—if they can be called such—get so much wrong? Part of the answer follows Solomon's warning in Proverbs 18:17, "The first one to plead his cause seems right, until his neighbor comes and examines him." According to Franklin, "because local officials did not speak publicly early on about the true events of the past year, the media simply formed their stories based on one-side's statements—the Jena 6." Evidently, reporters took advocates for the assailants at their word and made little effort to fact-check their assertions. Franklin concludes, "[T]he media were downright lazy in their efforts to find the truth. Often, they simply reported what they'd read on blogs, which expressed only one side of the issue."

One might just relegate the media's mishandling of the facts to sloppy journalism except for a section of the USA Today article left out of the above quotation:

The events in Jena have caught the attention of national civil rights activists. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King III have marched on Jena in protest.

"The case plays to the fears of many blacks," Sharpton says. "You hear the stories from your parents and grandparents, but you never thought it would happen in 2007. I think what resonates in the black community is that this is so mindful of pre-1960 America."

When civil-rights activists like Sharpton and Jackson become involved in a matter, such as the equally infamous Duke Lacrosse case, the word "agenda" should come immediately to mind. These two men in particular exist to stir up racial animosity because the maintenance of their personal wealth and reputation demands that they exploit every incident of interracial friction, whether or not racism played any part in it. They have been aided and abetted by a willing media, which shares many of their views. Like the Duke Lacrosse case, the Jena 6 incident fit the liberal "template" of racist America—a pattern that has been used successfully many times in the past to score political victories for the Left.

Information has surpassed oil as the commodity of control in this nation and indeed around the world. Spin is in; truth is out. Whoever controls the bias on the news controls the populace. One can see this in any number of areas: the Iraq War, the climate change hysteria, the homosexual-rights movement, the immigration issue, etc. Polls consistently show that the American people implicitly believe what the media tells them, even when the facts prove otherwise. For instance, a recent poll showed that most Americans thought that the troop surge in Iraq was increasing casualties there, but since the infusion of additional soldiers, casualties have decreased significantly. The public's impression of increased violence is an effect of media incessantly reporting on so-called atrocities (many of which are later shown to have been greatly exaggerated). So, despite an improved situation on the ground, the public outcry is still, "Bring the troops home!"

Isaiah prophesies of just this kind of departure from the truth: "Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. So truth fails, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey" (Isaiah 59:14-15). The prophet speaks of a whole society so removed from what is true and right that they are groping, stumbling blindly forward, realizing instinctively that their doom is not far off. This is just what is happening in America as the truth is becoming more difficult to find amidst the flood of available information. How vital it is for us to seek the truth (Proverbs 23:23) and hold on to it in these evil days (Revelation 3:11)!

The Haditha Non-Story

Listen (RealAudio)

A year and a half ago, the bloodbath at Haditha, a city in the western Iraqi province of Al Anbar, was big news. The major media outlets in the United States and worldwide reported that on November 19, 2005, Marines from the Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment slaughtered 24 Iraqi civilians in retaliation for the killing of a comrade, Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas, by an improvised explosive device (IED). When the military's account of the fighting did not match media reports, which accused the Marines of wantonly massacring unarmed civilians—and even killing some execution-style—the Marine Corps opened an investigation, ultimately charging eight Marines with crimes, four of them with unpremeditated murder.

From media reporting, it sounded an awful lot like a My Lai-style atrocity. A company of soldiers, angered by the death of a respected brother-in-arms, goes rogue, taking its revenge on innocent villagers, killing until its bullets are spent and no one remains to be killed.

But not so fast.

Now that sober investigations have been done and pre-trial hearings have taken place, it seems that the media was once again horribly wrong. In fact, in the media's rush to judgment on these Marines, the reporters got the story backwards. The Marines were doing their jobs in accordance with the rules of war, while Iraqi insurgents used civilians as human shields, letting them suffer for the insurgents' terrorism. The situation is reminiscent of a wise proverb of Solomon: "The first one to plead his cause seems right, until his neighbor comes and examines him" (Proverbs 18:17).

A more accurate account runs as follows: Intelligence gathered before the day in question pointed to an insurgent ambush of the Marines in Haditha. Two facts were certain: About twenty insurgents would participate in the ambush, and a white car was to play a major part in the attack. As the company rolled into the area, an IED exploded near a Humvee, killing Terrazas and seriously wounding at least one other Marine, Lance Corporal James Crossan. Due to the intelligence, the Marines were ready for such an occurrence and quickly went on the offensive.

A white Opal taxi skidded to a stop on the Marines' left, which was exposed to attack, and five men jumped out, and seeing that the Marines already deployed, turned to flee. The ambush had failed to surprise its targets. Sergeant Frank Wuterich and Sergeant Sanick P. Dela Cruz ordered the fleeing men to stop, and when they did not, the Marines opened fire, killing them. It was later discovered that four of these five men were known insurgents.

Shortly afterward, Lieutenant William T. Kallop arrived on the scene, and the Marines began receiving small arms fire from a nearby house, into which a known insurgent was seen to run. Kallop ordered the company to take the house. The remaining nineteen victims were killed when soldiers used grenades and automatic rifles on the house and the two houses adjacent to it. To a civilian, this may seem excessive, but Marines are trained to "clear a house" in this manner. Four of the dead in the houses were later identified to be known insurgents. Other insurgents fled from the rear of the houses.

It is true that the initial military report on the incident was misleading, as it said that fifteen Iraqis had been killed by the IED. As details began to be amassed, this report was soon proved to be wrong. For instance, a gruesome video soon turned up, supposedly showing the atrocity in all its gore. It was shot, wrote Tim McGirk of Time magazine in March 2006, by a "budding journalism student," later learned to be 43-year-old Taher Thabet al-Hadithi, the head of the Hammurabi Organization for Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring. This group has members across Iraq, two of which, al-Hadithi and Ali Omar Abrahem al-Mashhadani, had been held for five months in the infamous Abu Ghraib Prison as insurgents or insurgent-sympathizers. Al-Hadithi was shooting film that day and in that place because Iraqi insurgents routinely film their ambushes and terrorist acts for propaganda purposes. It was later learned that the initial intelligence on the ambush had been intercepted from cell phone calls between al-Hadithi and al-Mashhadani.

Reporters also took the word of local Iraqis at face value. A nine-year-old boy told a story of the cold-blooded murder of his grandfather and grandmother, but his claims of Marines entering the house and killing his grandparents at close range do not accord with what is now known. In addition, a local doctor said that the 24 bodies brought to his hospital that evening did not contain shrapnel wounds, as the Marines claimed, but many of them had been shot in the head and chest at close range. However, the walls and ceilings of the houses were filled with shrapnel from the Marines' grenades, so his testimony is untrustworthy. No official reports on the state of the victims' bodies has yet been made public.

We must also recall the political environment surrounding the Haditha "Massacre." By November 2005, it was clear that the U.S. military would be in Iraq for an extended period, and support for the war at home was eroding. The President's political opponents were gearing up for an all-out assault on his Iraq policy in order to win the 2006 congressional elections. They had many willing accomplices in the media—in fact, it has just been reported that journalists support Democrat and liberal causes over Republican or conservative causes by a 9-to-1 margin. Thus, a "massacre" by Bush's Marines was just what the doctor ordered.

What can we learn from this? Simply, and unfortunately, we cannot trust what we are being told by the media. Or, at best, as Ronald Reagan said so famously regarding the Cold War's weapon's treaties with the Soviet Union, we should "trust but verify" what they report. This is especially true in "breaking news" stories. Not all the facts are known as an event occurs, and sometimes, as in this case, not for months or years later. In The Merchant of Venice, one of William Shakespeare's characters says, ". . . at the length truth will out." In other words, we should not be too hasty in judgment, which often cause a person subsequently to make serious errors, but we need to let the truth speak for itself as it becomes known over time.

The Price of Arrogance

A consistent criticism of the Bush administration has been that it is arrogant in its dealings with the media, the Democrat opposition, and even with its own allies in Congress. This accusation has again arisen in the midst of the most recent controversies over Vice President Dick Cheney's pelting of a quail hunting partner and the Dubai Ports World's contract to manage six of America's port facilities. Its arrogance, critics say, is demonstrated in its take-it-or-leave-it approach on both its statements to the press and its demands regarding legislation.

When George W. Bush was inaugurated in 2001, the talk around Washington centered on the "new tone" the President wanted to bring to the nation's capital. He and the American people, it was said, were tired of the partisan bickering between Republicans and Democrats. It was time for mutually respectful dialogue, a pleasant change from attack ads and demagoguery. So, said the administration, the President would not engage in partisan politics but would welcome the views of both allies and enemies with equanimity. Instead of being divided, we can forge consensus solutions to America's pressing problems.

As it evolved into its current, overconfident form, the "new tone" clashed with equal arrogance in the media and among politicians. Feeling snubbed, the big media outlets like CBS, exposed regularly in its liberal bias, haughtily reported severely slanted "news"—in reality, thinly guised editorials—to make the Bush administration look as out of touch and out of bounds as possible. Democrat and Republican politicians, for differing reasons, sniffed and moaned that Bush and his cadre merely expected them to fall into line on every issue instead of persuading them with sound reason and traditional inducements (read, quid pro quo). Thus, the new tone's arrogance meets the media's and politicians' hauteur, and everyone loses, especially the American people.

As an example, at the risk of tedium, let us revisit the reason for invading Iraq. Most observers would say the Coalition of the Willing inflicted "shock and awe" on Saddam Hussein's regime because of his accumulation of weapons of mass destruction. He was a threat to his neighbors, he had used them on his own people, and he was defying the international community in failing to divulge and destroy his stockpiles. The Bush administration, including Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney, and George Bush himself, made such statements hundreds of times in public speeches and interviews. This was all we heard for months as the armed forces geared up for the assault.

However, if this was a reason, it was in actuality far down the list. There were multiple reasons: the free flow of oil, the Oil-for-Food fiasco, freeing the Iraqi's to govern themselves, Saddam's human rights violations, and yes, even his support of international terrorism, particularly against Israel. But the main reason was strategic, and it was, to my knowledge, never mentioned by the Bush administration. The real reason for conquering Iraq was to drive a wedge into the heart of the Middle East. Administration analysts figured that a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq would pacify regimes in the region and bring a measure of stability through fear and uncertainty about what the Americans would do if any one of them began to misbehave. Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian National Authority, Egypt, and other Middle Eastern nations have already moderated to varying degrees out of alarm over Bush's "cowboy" foreign policy.

Evidently, the Bush administration has never admitted to its strategic plan, and even what geopolitical observers think they know of it has been deduced through actual events. The White House continued to harp on weapons of mass destruction until very little was turned up, then it began beating the "bringing democracy to the oppressed Iraqi people" drum until it, too, began to wear thin. Now it is singing the praises of the fledgling Iraqi constitution, government, and armed forces, promising to reduce troop levels as soon as the Iraqi's are ready for the GIs to leave. No matter whether it is good policy or not, this close-to-the-vest style of governance infuriates friend and foe alike because it comes across as arrogant.

What has it produced? Internal conflict, distrust, accusation, division, and endless conspiracy theories. "What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate," said the captain to Cool Hand Luke, and similarly, a President, whom many see as cocky, is in deep trouble. His cockiness has eroded his support down toward one-third of the electorate, portending bad news for his party at the polls this November.

We can take a lesson from what has happened in this instance. Clear communication is vital to walking in harmony with others. Many husbands believe that they fill their roles best as the strong, silent types, but doing so is more likely to cause a rift in the relationship because wives are left to guess their husband's reasons, motives, and desires. But they cannot read minds! And if they act on something they were forced to assume due to their husband's lack of communication, they are likely to bear the brunt of his often hurtful, divisive reaction.

Arrogance is a form of pride, which forms the basis of many sins. An arrogant person assumes that he is superior to others, and therefore, since he has the final say in matters, others just have to deal with it. Before long, such an attitude will drive all but the most devoted or sycophantic away. In the end, arrogance is a destroyer of relationships, and it almost always ends in divorce. Satan's arrogance, for instance, caused him to attack God, destroying that once-close association (see Isaiah 14:12-15; Ezekiel 28:17).

The price of arrogance is separation, whether separation from God, from mate, from brethren, from friends, from coworkers, etc. God counsels humility, its polar opposite, for by it one encourages unity and true fellowship. Paul writes, "Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself" (Philippians 2:3).