Believe it or not, I haven’t even “liked” the Occupy Democrats facebook page!

I get my news from a whole lot of sources. And before posting or sharing anything, I usually look it up to see what is being written by conservative websites, too. And when friends post up things, I OFTEN look up what they saw and verify it. If it’s misrepresented, or flat out false, I’ll comment and/or message them to let them know.

As far as if you consume fox news, I was going off of you portraying every other news source as “insanely liberal and anti trump.”

I’m guessing you also read and at least somewhat trust sites like Breitbart?

I happen to know for a fact they have reported lies about major things that I, myself, was involved with. Took things like a classname on the body tag of a document to show a conspiracy, when all it was was something missed in exporting to a static HTML document, where the system I wrote was designed to add “campaigns” when generating a page out from the CMS if you were using the template that removed all of the normal website links, the menu, the footer, etc.

The fact I didn’t take an extra 30 seconds to remove that one word gave them an opening to state that Planned Parenthood *staged* an attack on their website.

Nothing could have been further from the truth, in fact, it was most likely part of a coordinated attack by pro-lifers. At the time, I was working 14–30 hour days trying to get things online because of the breach. Working with the top levels of IT, side by side, and I know beyond any doubt that it was no “false flag” operation.

So, yeah, I get that the media can be biased. This is just one example where I have personal experience, for context.

I also understand that it’s important to have many sources, and look at all angles. I do understand statistics, too.

I don’t “blindly believe” that there is a problem with how our police function in this country because of the news media.

I “firmly believe” that there is a problem because I have seen it with my own eyes, and I have heard it from the lips of multiple friends that I would trust with my life.

If you didn’t read it the first time, please take a second to read through that allegory about sunburns. Just because you don’t see the issue, or can evaluate sources to determine a justification in any particular case doesn’t change the fact that we have a systemic problem in enforcement of the law in the United States.

And, incidentally, the Discover the Networks site that you listed doesn’t actually list Black Lives Matter. And from talking with multiple people that have been part of BLM in the Twin Cities over the last year, they’re not “funded” much at all. Quite the opposite.

As far as Omar, that’s a tough one. The FBI already investigated him a couple times and didn’t find a credible threat as a terrorist, so I’m not sure if we want to trust they absolutely got things right. There may have been nothing on his phone, but that’s not to say he didn’t have other phones, which may have been discarded before the attack to cover his tracks. As a Muslim man with a homophobic father, it’s reasonable to assume that he tried to hide any of those tendencies if they existed.

Being married and having kids doesn’t mean much, either. It’s not like exceptionally vocal homophobes have turned out to be simply extremely closeted.

Which are we to believe? That he hid his shame for being homosexual so deep that the FBI couldn’t find it, or should we believe that they were thorough yet didn’t find ties to terrorism? Communications could have been hidden on either.

But, really, that’s a completely different issue and conversation. It doesn’t change the fact that there is a vast difference in how POC are treated by the police vs whites.