The @NYTimes mirrors its 1991 biased coverage of the Crown Heights pogrom ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Sunday, October 30, 2022

The @NYTimes mirrors its 1991 biased coverage of the Crown Heights pogrom

The New York Times today has an article, "How the Hasidic Jewish Community Became a Political Force in New York."

It mentions the 1991 Crown Heights pogrom, but it describes it in ridiculously evenhanded terms that don't reflect reality:

The Hasidic community began to carefully build relationships with elected officials, starting in the 1950s, when Rabbi Teitelbaum found common ground with Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr.

A pivotal moment came in 1991 when the Crown Heights riots shook the city.

The violence and chaos was almost unimaginable. Overnight, Brooklyn streets had turned into combat zones, pitting groups of Hasidic Jews against mostly Black men — some holding longstanding grudges over what they saw as the Hasidic community receiving preferential treatment from the police and the city. Racial and antisemitic epithets filled the air alongside hurled rocks and bottles.

So I looked up the original coverage by the New York Times of the rioting, and this very close to what their original article, on August 21, 1991, had claimed:

Hasidim and blacks clashed in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn through the day and into the night yesterday as the two communities, separately and bitterly, each mourned a member killed, one in a traffic accident on Monday night and the other stabbed in the racial melee that followed.
Bottles, rocks and ethnic slurs were hurled as hundreds of police officers struggled to separate the screaming, taunting groups near the headquarters of the Lubavitcher sect, at 770 Eastern Parkway.

Yet the article went on to mention a number of outrages by the Black community - and not one from the Hasidim.

The very next paragraph summarized it:

As darkness fell, about 500 blacks, mostly young teen-agers, gathered at the intersection of President Street and Utica Avenue, where the accident had occurred and where the dead child had lived. They set afire at least three vehicles, one a police car, hurled rocks at houses owned by Jews and looted a sneaker store. Five reporters and photographers were beaten, two by police officers and three by black protesters.

Not one example of racial epithet was given. (There apparently were groups of Hasidim that threw bottles and rocks back at black youths who were attempting to hurt them.)

The other New York media was not so circumspect. Newsday's celebrated columnist, Jimmy Breslin, was nearly lynched from a cab, and not from Hasidim:

"And up in the higher echelons of journalism, some moron starts talking about balanced coverage."

Exactly. Covering a story like this as if there is "balance" between a murderous mob and a mostly peaceful group of Jews, between a tragic car accident and the purposeful murder of a Jew, is not balanced journalism - it is irresponsible pandering to avoid appearing to be racist.

And it is just as outrageous in 2022 as it was in 1991.

But, hey. maybe they thought that the angry blacks were merely anti-Zionist: