The New York Times has ignored Jacob Blake’s admission in a national interview earlier this month that he was in possession of a knife when he was shot and severely wounded by a police officer.
Blake, who is Black, was shot seven times by a white officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after police responded to a 911 call from the mother of his children on Aug. 23. He had warrants out for several charges, including disorderly conduct and third-degree sexual assault. Police tried to arrest him and after a brief tussle with officers, he moved toward the front of his car.
“I realized I had dropped my knife, had a little pocket knife. So I picked it up after I got off of him because they tased me and I fell on top of him,” Blake told Michael Strahan on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Jan. 14.
While the Times’ Jan. 5 story, “What We Know About the Shooting of Jacob Blake” does not call Blake unarmed during the shooting, it quoted police and state officials claiming he held a knife, not Blake himself. It also noted Blake’s attorney Benjamin Crump denied he had a knife. That was the last story from the Times to mention the knife in a story about Blake, according to a search of its archives.
The Times also referred to Blake as “unarmed” in earlier stories about the incident. He was left paralyzed by the shooting, which touched off violent protests after videos of it went viral.
Journalist Jeryl Bier criticized legacy media outlets like the New York Times for their “bias of omission” on the story in a Twitter thread.
“Given the publicity around the Blake story and the oft repeated incorrect assertion that he was unarmed, I cannot but conclude that his admission of the open knife has been deliberately ignored and/or downplayed because it doesn’t fit the preferred narrative,” Bier tweeted.
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