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<font size=3><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">November 9,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Glen Beck's
Mumia Obsession <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">Fox
Finds a New Black Boogeyman
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By LINN
WASHINGTON, Jr. <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">R</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>elax Rev Jeremiah Wright.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
Kincaid, in an October 19th posting on his Accuracy in Media site, scored
Hill for calling Abu-Jamal a “freedom fighter and political
prisoner.”<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
A September 6, 2009 <i>New York Times</i> 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.<br><br>
However, that <i>Times </i>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.<br><br>
“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.<br><br>
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.”<br><br>
Yet, the <i>New York Times</i> 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.<br><br>
Philadelphia’s largest newspaper, <i>The Philadelphia Inquirer</i>, ran a
53-word News Brief on page 2 of its B-section on that thirty-five page AI
report. <br><br>
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 <i>Inquirer</i> did not consider that report
significant enough for full article coverage despite having published 67
articles mentioning Abu-Jamal in 1999 alone<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Fair trial proceedings are a fundamental tenant of American democracy.
<br><br>
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.” <br><br>
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.
<br><br>
That ruling contradicts the reality that judges control what evidence a
jury hears. <br><br>
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.”<br><br>
Surprisingly, a mainstream media usually quick to prick racially
inflammatory remarks exhibits little interest in numerous instances of
racism infecting the Abu-Jamal case.<br><br>
Evidence of outrageous errors underlying Abu-Jamal’s conviction literally
hides in plain sight.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Yet these inconsistencies and irregularities are what fuel the vast
international movement supporting a new trial for Abu-Jamal.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
One major civil rights violation often overlooked by Abu-Jamal supporters
and ignored by his opponents occurred during a critical 1995 appeal
hearing.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.”<br><br>
<b>Linn Washington Jr.</b> 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.<br><br>
<br><br>
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