Grumpy Editor noted a couple of interesting things in connection with last Wednesday’s widely-covered rioting at U.C. Berkeley: With wall-to-wall protesters, some tossing explosives and others smashing windows and starting fires, only one (or three) arrests were made. And, strangely, apparently no media person sought quotes from U.C. President Janet Napolitano, the former secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama.
The violent protests that prompted the cancellation of Breitbart senior editor Milo Yiannopoulos’s speech resulted in $100,000 in damage.
Police estimated 1,500 protesters were involved.
Most stories cited just one arrest. But KGO, San Francisco, put the number nabbed at three.
Media were silent on some questions:
Why weren’t there more arrests?
Why weren’t there more police on the scene?
Were many protesters non-students?
Rioting extended to downtown Berkeley where windows of bank offices were boarded up Thursday after being smashed the previous night.
On Thursday's CNN Tonight, U.C. Berkeley professor and former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich promoted a conspiracy theory, maintaining it was a group of right-wingers --- perhaps linked to Breitbart News --- who were responsible for the rioting.
The uprising resulted in President Donald Trump questioning federal funds to the campus while mentioning, “U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view.”
U.C. Berkeley last year received $370 million in research money from the federal government, more than half its total research budget of $674 million.
IN CASE YOUR FAVORITE NEWS OUTLETS MISSED THESE…
Setting the media straight: Vice President Mike Pence was busy on the Sunday news circuit, making the rounds at ABC's "This Week," NBC's "Meet the Press," CBS' "Face the Nation" and "Fox News Sunday"... The Mercury News, San Jose, reported after a month of blizzards, the Sierra Nevada snowpack --- source of a third of California’s drinking water --- is 177 percent of the historic average, most since Feb. 1, 1995, adding, “California Gov. Jerry Brown isn’t likely to amend or rescind the state’s emergency drought declaration until April”…NewsBusters observed New York Times CEO Mark Thompson on CNBC’s Power Lunch argued that the newspaper doesn’t display a liberal bias because “we aim to be objective and to tell people straightforwardly what's happening”…The New Yorker and Vanity Fair have pulled out from White House Correspondents’ Dinner events slated for April 29… Now animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is concerned over ‘Punxsutawney Phil,“ the groundhog that gets national coverage on Groundhog Day. On Thursday, “Phil” took the stage in Gobbler's Knob, Pa. and predicted six more weeks of winter. The time-honored tradition, however, could actually be harmful for Phil, PETA told Britain’s DailyMail.com…Meredith Corp., publisher of Better Homes and Gardens, Parents and Shape, among others, laid off 40 staffers…The Wall Street Journal is closing its bureau in Budapest as part of its downsizing in Europe and Asia.
In a New York Times op-ed piece, actress Angelina Jolie wrote that discriminating against refugees for their religion or country of origin "invites the very instability we seek to protect ourselves against."
