MSNBC & CNN enter San Bernardino Suspects Apartment
From David A Graham in The Atlantic:
On live national television, reporters sifted through the remains of the lives of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. They picked over children’s toys. They held up photos, speculating about whether the woman depicted in one might be Malik. They displayed Social Security cards and driver’s licenses with readily identifiable information — and not just for the deceased suspects:
As if the journalistic irresponsibility of baselessly speculating while holding up images of potentially innocent people on TV wasn’t bad enough, it beggars belief the scene wasn’t taped off and guarded. Reporters were given free rein to walk through an apartment that is an important part of the investigation, and they were allowed to handle what one would expect to be evidence. Police didn’t appear to know the media tour was going on.
If this was a description of a scene from a movie we would all laugh at how implausible it would be, but yet on live television two major networks and their journalists walked into a suspects apartment and rifled through personal possessions despite the fact that there is an on-going investigation by the FBI.
The two, now dead, suspects are reported to be Muslims who allegedly killed 14 people in San Bernardino. Mass shootings in America are not unusual, there was have more mass shooting in America than days have passed in 2015 but this is the first time something like this has happened.
Were journalists allowed to get into the apartment because the suspects on this occasion were Muslim? The FBI and police seem remarkable calm about the incident, despite the fact that potential evidence may have been tampered with, or things planted in the apartment.
One has to wonder if this aggressive gutter journalism was tolerated due to the religion of the suspects and the religion of the suspects innocent families who have now had their pictures and private details exposed on national television. Will the innocent families of these suspects now have round the clock protection from any potential retaliation? Or is this the collective punishment all Muslims now have to live with due to the actions of a few.
Will the Networks and journalists involved be arrested for tampering with evidence in an on-going investigation? I suspect not, but what we do know is that as every day passes and Islamophobia is ever more rife in America, Muslims are losing faith in the rule of law protecting them.
