Unanswered Questions in the Isla Vista CA Shootings
Source: activistpost.com
When mass shootings take place in the United States, corporate news media can almost uniformly be counted on to act as stenographers to power. They dutifully report exactly what they’re told by authorities with wholehearted trust and close to no due diligence. This appears to have been the case yet again in the May 23 Isla Vista California mass murder.The public has been propagandized with a familiar storyline that law enforcement authorities have peppered with lurid details - including a disturbing “manifesto” and YouTube soliloquy from a well-to-do yet alienated man who had trouble forging relationships, so he went on a wild shooting spree then committed suicide.
Like numerous other tragic events that cry out for heightened measures against gun ownership, such as the Tucson shooting, the Sikh Temple bloodletting, the Aurora movie theatre massacre, and the Newtown school shooting, initial eyewitness accounts of what took place differ markedly from what news media presented in subsequent reports - those laid out in law enforcement press conferences just hours after the event.
Otto von Bismarck famously remarked, “Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.” In a society where the Second Amendment and gun violence have been vigorously politicized by powerful “reformists” like billionaire Michael Bloomberg, Attorney General Eric Holder, and President Barack Obama, journalists might be well-served by keeping this dictum in mind.
What became the acceptable storyline remains dubious given initial reports of the event. For example, Michael Vitak, a University of California Santa Barbara student from the Czech Republic, stated in a live televised interview that he saw more than one gunman - "’guys in a BMW. Maybe they were trying to prove they’re tough.’" Vitak claims to have witnessed the men shooting at two girls; one was shot dead, the other was critically injured. "I heard shots, screams, pain," says Vitak. ’All emotions. I hope she is going to be fine.’ Vitak asserts it was too dark to see the suspects’ faces."[1]
Mr. Vitak was one of many bystanders who saw two men carry out the shootings. “Multiple witnesses say they saw two people inside the suspect’s vehicle,” Santa Barbara television station KEYT reported.[2] Another source conveyed how Santa Barbara County Sheriff public information officer Kelly Hoover confirmed that a second suspect had been apprehended.[3] Still, during an early press conference Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown would neither confirm nor deny whether there was a second suspect, only “that there are multiple scenes and multiple victims and that the situation is fluid.”[4]
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Read the full article at: activistpost.com
