The Washington Post’s Peter Herman late yesterday filed a “report” that alleges that an unidentified prisoner who was also in the back of a police van with Gray claimed he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” and “was intentionally trying to injure himself.”
Citing a document “written by a Baltimore police investigator” which is part of an allegedly secret probe, Herman (playing the role NYT’s Judith Miller first made famous while “covering” the pre-Iraq invasion Bush info-war/domestic psyops operation ), tells us this unsourced leak “offers the first glimpse of what might have happened inside the van.” Which is a plain and easily revealed lie.
We already know from publicly available sources a number of facts about what did happen: Police officials have stated that Gray was conscious and able to climb into the van when he was first placed in it; police officials have already said that Gray was alone with police in the van for 30 minutes before the second and only other passenger-prisoner was picked up. Previous, unchallenged reporting puts the distance between that second pick up and the final stop at the police station at less than seven blocks, taking approximately seven minutes.
All of which means that if the implication of the Washington Post’s sickeningly irresponsible headline (Prisoner in van said Freddie Gray was ‘trying to injure himself,’…) is true, then Gray not only tried to but succeeded in severing his own spine in the last 5 to 7 minutes of a 40 minute ride—and did it without leaving any other visible signs of injury other than a collapsed larynx.
Well then…
Why would a professional journalist cooperate with such a self-serving an obvious attempt at BPD disinformation. Why would anyone not do some real investigation into who was behind leaking a document so at odds with the known facts?
As it turn out other reporters knew of the leaked document and dismissed it as chaff. WBAL’s Jayne Miller fiercely debunked the phony report in an interview with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell last night.
In my 50-plus years of literate awareness, I cannot recall a more repulsive case of blaming a victim.
INDICT PETER HERMANN FOR IMPERSONATION OF A JOURNALIST AND CONSPIRACY TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE
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