[Ppnews] Mumia - Fox Finds a New Black Boogeyman

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/

November 9, 2009


Glen Beck's Mumia Obsession


Fox Finds a New Black Boogeyman

By LINN WASHINGTON, Jr.

Relax Rev Jeremiah Wright.

The Fox News cable channel crew has discovered a 
new all-purpose black boogey-man to rile latent 
racial animosity in America: Mumia Abu-Jamal, the 
internationally acclaimed death row journalist.

Abu-Jamal is now a regular reference in the 
weapons of mass deception arsenal employed by Fox 
and its friends to demonize their enemies de jour.

A few weeks ago, the campaign mounted by two Fox 
ideological allies that successfully sacked Fox 
liberal commentator Dr. Marc Lamont Hill 
highlighted Hill’s backing of a fair trial for 
Abu-Jamal as an objectionable offense.

Far-right agitators David Horowitz and Cliff 
Kincaid saw sinful scandal in FOX simply 
employing Columbia University Professor Hill for 
what the scholar was: a liberal hired by Fox to 
question postures conservatives proclaim sacrosanct.

Kincaid, in an October 19th posting on his 
Accuracy in Media site, scored Hill for calling 
Abu-Jamal a “freedom fighter and political prisoner.”

Earlier this summer Fox’s onslaught against now 
former White House ‘Green Jobs Czar’ Van Jones 
frequently cited Jones’ support for Abu-Jamal who 
is on Pennsylvania’s death row due to a 
controversy mired conviction for killing a Philadelphia policeman.

For weeks, Fox’s popular Glenn Beck bashed Jones 
for supporting efforts to free “a communist cop 
killer” – irrespective of the fact that Abu-Jamal 
is not a communist and card carrying communists 
never reference Abu-Jamal as a member of their movement.

Frequent emphasis by advocates of Abu-Jamal’s 
execution, including Fox hosts, that courts have 
repeatedly held-up Abu-Jamal’s conviction ignore 
an improbability embedded in that accurate statement about this case.

The same Philadelphia and Pennsylvania courts 
that have found major flaws in 86 Philadelphia 
death penalty convictions between Abu-Jamal’s 
December 1981 arrest and October 2009 declare 
that not a single error exists in America’s most 
publicly contentious murder case.

Pa courts, for example, find no foul in 
prosecutors improperly excluding blacks from 
Abu-Jamal’s trial jury, manipulating evidence and 
making secret deals with alleged eyewitnesses – 
all fundamental fair trial violations producing 
favorable actions by those courts for defendants in numerous cases.

Another example is Pa State and federal courts 
voiding 22 death penalties because of failures by 
defense lawyers to present any mitigating 
evidence for their clients during death penalty 
phase hearings following guilty verdicts.

However, those same courts found no fault in the 
failure of Abu-Jamal’s trial counsel to present 
any mitigating evidence during the penalty phase hearing.

A problem more troubling than the penchant of Fox 
and friends to fudge facts is the fact that too 
much of the mainstream media uncritically 
embraces rhetoric oozing from the far right, 
rarely subjecting that rhetoric to full and fair 
reporting that is supposed to be the cornerstone of journalism.

This lack of full and fair reportage polluted 
coverage of the onslaught against Van Jones and 
has long corrupted coverage of the controversial Abu-Jamal conviction.

A September 6, 2009 New York Times article on the 
resignation of Van Jones from his White House 
post listed Jones’ public support of Abu-Jamal as 
one of Jones’ alleged liabilities.

However, that Times article lacked any reference 
to the fact that Jones, as an Ivy League trained 
lawyer involved with social justice issues, could 
legitimately have concerns about the disturbing 
evidence of fair trial rights violations enmeshed in Abu-Jamal’s conviction.

“Human rights organizations have pointed to 
egregious procedural mistakes in Abu-Jamal’s 
original trial, which were obviously rooted in a 
background of prevalent racism,” stated a 
resolution approved on October 28th by the City 
Council of Munich, Germany. Elected leaders in 
over twenty-five cities from San Francisco to 
Copenhagen have approved resolutions demanding a new trial for Abu-Jamal.

The seminal February 2000 Amnesty International 
report on the Abu-Jamal case concluded that 
“numerous aspects of this case clearly failed to 
meet minimum international standards safeguarding 
the fairness of legal proceedings.”

Yet, the New York Times and other major American 
newspapers deemed Amnesty International’s 
Abu-Jamal report not worthy of coverage despite 
major papers carrying nearly thirty articles 
referencing other AI actions during a ten-day 
time period surrounding release of that Abu-Jamal report.

Philadelphia’s largest newspaper, The 
Philadelphia Inquirer, ran a 53-word News Brief 
on page 2 of its B-section on that thirty-five page AI report.

Although the AI report was the first from a major 
organization to thoroughly document egregious 
shenanigans by the Pa Supreme Court in the 
Abu-Jamal case, – the Inquirer did not consider 
that report significant enough for full article 
coverage despite having published 67 articles 
mentioning Abu-Jamal in 1999 alone

The mainstream news media’s 
mile-wide-but-inch-thick coverage of Abu-Jamal 
aids the ability of Fox, its friends and others 
to exploit public misunderstandings about this case.

Fair trial proceedings are a fundamental tenant of American democracy.

Yet, the judge presiding during Abu-Jamal’s trial 
displayed unfair bias by proclaiming before jury 
selection that he was going to help prosecutors “fry the nigger.”

While such an overtly racist remark generally 
constitutes a judicial error requiring reversal 
of a conviction, a Philadelphia judge ruled no 
error existed because the jury not the judge convicted Abu-Jamal.

That ruling contradicts the reality that judges 
control what evidence a jury hears.

That Amnesty International report noted that “the 
jury was left unaware of much of the crucial 
information regarding” the policeman’s death due 
in part to “the overt hostility of the trial judge.”

Surprisingly, a mainstream media usually quick to 
prick racially inflammatory remarks exhibits 
little interest in numerous instances of racism infecting the Abu-Jamal case.

Evidence of outrageous errors underlying 
Abu-Jamal’s conviction literally hides in plain sight.

One glaring example is photos of the December 
1981 crime scene taken by police investigators 
that do not show a critical element of the 
prosecution’s case against Abu-Jamal.

The eyewitness testimony of cab driver Robert 
Chobert was a central pillar of the prosecution’s 
case against Abu-Jamal but police crime scene 
photos do not show Chobert’s cab behind the slain 
officer’s patrol car where prosecutors claimed it 
was parked when Abu-Jamal killed Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Four police photos capturing different angles of 
the crime scene contained in the trailer for a 
forthcoming film about Abu-Jamal’s case do not show Chobert’s cab.

There are only two possible scenarios for the 
missing cab in those crime scene photos: either 
police tampered with the crime scene by removing 
the cab or the cab was never there. Either 
scenario is a major legal violation warranting a new trial.

Curiously, inconsistencies in crime scene 
evidence and irregularities in court rulings 
rarely elicit attention in mainstream media 
coverage of the Abu-Jamal case that takes a guilty-as-charged tact.

Yet these inconsistencies and irregularities are 
what fuel the vast international movement supporting a new trial for Abu-Jamal.

On Thursday, November 12th, Abu-Jamal supporters 
have scheduled a rally at the US Justice 
Department headquarters in Washington, DC urging 
Attorney General Eric Holder to launch a civil 
rights investigation into violations rampant in this contentious case.

One major civil rights violation often overlooked 
by Abu-Jamal supporters and ignored by his 
opponents occurred during a critical 1995 appeal hearing.

Pa’s then Governor Tom Ridge sabotaged that 
proceeding by improperly issuing a death warrant 
based on confidential information Ridge’s aides 
obtained from state prison personnel who were 
illegally intercepting mail sent to Abu-Jamal by his defense lawyers.

Ridge’s warrant enabled biased trial Judge Albert 
Sabo to rush that appeal hearing where Sabo 
denied defense lawyers standard opportunities to 
adequately gather and present evidence.

While a federal appeals court faulted prison 
personnel for illegally opening Abu-Jamal’s legal 
mail neither federal nor state courts have found 
any fault in the damage to fair trial proceedings 
done by Ridge’s malicious action.

One problem with mainstream media coverage of the 
Abu-Jamal case and other instances of racial 
related injustices from the criminal justice 
system to other sectors of society like education 
or employment is that coverage presents racial 
inequities as isolated instead of endemic.

Failure to present inequities in context deprives 
the public of proper understanding. The 1968 
Kerner Commission Report on race relations in 
America faulted the news media for this failure.

As noted in the Kerner Report, “If what the white 
American reads in the newspapers or sees on 
television conditions his expectation of what is 
ordinary and normal in the larger society, he 
will neither understand nor accept the black American.”

Linn Washington Jr. is an Associate Professor of 
Journalism at Temple University in Philadelphia, 
Pa. He writes regularly on the Abu-Jamal case, 
inequities in the justice system and racism in the news media.




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