WorldNetDaily's Long, Hot Summer of Race-Baiting

It's been a long, hot summer for many in the U.S., and WorldNetDaily has decided to turn up the heat by doing a bit of race-baiting, eagerly portraying blacks as violent, mob-prone thugs.

WND first took a dip in that fetid pool with a May 1 article by Joe Kovacs, carrying the inflammatory headline "100 blacks beat white couple, media bury attack." ("100 blacks" was later changed to "many blacks," presumably because there was no evidence that "100 blacks" participated in the attack in question.)

Kovacs -- who has a notable history of getting things wrong -- asserted that "a white couple was attacked by dozens of black teenagers, and the local newspaper did not report on the incident for two weeks, despite the victims being reporters for the paper," based on the claims of a columnist for the newspaper in question. The columnist was the only source Kovacs cited; he couldn't be bothered to contact, say, the police in the town where the attack took place or the newspaper's editor. He also offered no evidence whatsoever that the attack was racially motivated.

Kovacs buried the fact that, according to the columnist, "The responding officer coded the incident as a simple assault," meaning that the paper would be unlikely to report it -- as would be standard practice for such a newspaper. The paper was also trying not to give the appearance of preferential treatment to its reporters over the public.

Of course, there's a reason you contact more than one source before reporting a story -- that single source may have his or her facts wrong. And that's what happened here, prompting Kovacs to do some damage control.

The next day, Kovacs finally got around to talking with the police -- who pointed out that there was no evidence the attack was racially motivated, quoting one officer as saying, “That’s what happens when [an opinion columnist] reports the news, not bound by the facts of the case.”

Kovacs reported only the police's ire toward the local paper, not toward WND for amplifying the biased report. But Kovacs also noted that his earlier story was "posted on the popular Drudge Report."

Further damage control from Kovacs came in another follow-up article in which he worked up the courage to talk to the newspaper's editor, something else he couldn't be bothered to do on day one:

“They think we buried the story. We didn’t. We didn’t bury anything,” Denis Finley, editor of the Virginian-Pilot, told WND. “People are just not stopping to think. What would be my motivation for protecting people who beat up two of my reporters? It’s completely ludicrous that I would do that.”

“I think we did the right thing. I think we’re on solid ground. I don’t think we can win here. If we had published a story, it would look like we’re playing favorites. Because I didn’t publish it, now I’m accused of a cover-up.”

Kovacs also quoted the police department spokesman as again asserting that the case "is not being investigated as a hate crime." Still, Kovacs insisted on portraying the attack as racially motivated anyway, claiming that "the couple was pummeled at a stoplight the night of April 14 by dozens of black teens.'

Kovacs also quoted the police department spokesman as again asserting that the case "is not being investigated as a hate crime." Still, Kovacs insisted on portraying the attack as racially motivated anyway, claiming that "the couple was pummeled at a stoplight the night of April 14 by dozens of black teens.'

But who cares about facts when you can play the race card? A May 4 article by Chelsea Schilling -- who has her own lengthy history of getting things wrong at WND -- asserted that the case is about "a mob attack by large numbers of black teenagers against a young white couple in a car," treated the columnist who originally played up the dubious race angle as authoritative, and buried police statements that there was no evidence of a hate crime.

Schilling, who perhaps had visions of Drudge links dancing in her head, wasn't done trying to make a mountain out of this molehill. Under the headline "Wave of black mobs brutalizing whites," Schilling claimed that there have been "dozens of brutal assaults by black mobs and assailants against white victims – and some attackers are citing the revenge for the Martin slaying as reason for their aggression." Yet Schilling identified only 10, including the above case even though, again, nobody who actually knows anything about this case was calling it a hate crime.

WND goes all in

Echoing its creepy ongoing obsession with female teachers who have affairs with their students -- and, presumably, with hopes of even more Drudge links to boost traffic -- WND decided that race-baiting suits it, even enlisting a freelance reporter to do the work.

Colin Flaherty is a Delaware resident who claims his "work and by-line has appeared in over 1000 newspapers and magazines around the world, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, San Diego Union Tribune, Time Magazine, and others." He also contributed two chapters to a Washington Post spy novel-writing competition.

Flaherty's race-baiting credentials, though, comes from a self-published book he wrote, called "White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It." He claims the book "breaks the code of silence on the explosion of racial violence in more than 50 cities since 2010."

Under the headline "Call for crackdown on black-on-white terror," a May 18 article by Flaherty highlighted a state lawmaker in Maryland who claims to be "concerned about 'black youths' who are 'terrorizing' Baltimore’s upscale Inner Harbor," which the legislator insists is a "hard truth." Flaherty followed that up with another article the same day touting how the lawmaker "wants the governor to send in state troopers to make the area safe."

Flaherty returned on June 6 to fearmonger about "blacks marauding" in Minneapolis:

Minneapolis police want you to know race has nothing to do with an epidemic of violent crime in their downtown.

Same for crime reporter Matt McKinney: The recent increase in what he calls “flash mob” violence and mayhem is “random” and “no other real pattern emerges” and the “motivation for the attack remains unclear.”

But more and more people in Minneapolis are connecting the violence with groups of blacks marauding through the downtown; beating, hurting, destroying and stealing. Sometimes right in front of police.

A lot of it on YouTube. With lots of witnesses – 15 to 20 times over the last year.

The attacks are part of a nationwide pattern of hundreds of episodes of unreported racial violence and lawlessness found in more than 50 cities over the last three years.

On June 17, Flaherty ranted about "one of the worst crimes scenes in the history of downtown Indianapolis" caused by "thousands of blacks who roamed the streets of downtown in the aftermath of an Indianapolis Black Expo marred by fighting, vandalizing, assaulting and even shooting. Lots of shooting."

On June 20, under the headline "Chicago's unreported race war," Flaherty wrote:

City officials and the media might be the only two places left where people still deny Chicago is under assault from more than 50 episodes of black mobs attacking, beating, robbing and vandalizing over the last three years in and around downtown. Many of them are on display at YouTube.

Some call it the “Chicago Intifada.”

Over just the last two weeks, black mobs are under investigation in at least five new violent incidents in downtown Chicago.

Flaherty followed that up on June 23 claiming that "a group of 10-15 hoodie-wearing blacks allegedly stole clothing and raced out of" a Nordstrom department store in Portland. In case WND's race-baiting intent wasn't clear from the tone of Flaherty's articles, a promotional email for the article made it all to clear:

Do these clothes I stole from Nordstroms during a mob-and-rob make me look fat?

The epidemic of crowds of young blacks rushing into stores, intimidating employees and customers and taking whatever they can grab has gone upscale. Movin' on up ...

And you thought you could avoid it by not shopping at those other stores, didn't you?

Flaherty's July 1 WND article informed of "several black mob attacks on – and robberies of – Jewish people in Brooklyn over the last two years, leaving broken bones and life-threatening injuries in their wake." Again, WND reinforced the race-baiting message in a promotional email, suggesting that this was somehow Obama's fault because " the election of Barack Obama supposed to heal the nation of any racial and religious divide."

Flaherty kept it up with a July 5 article invoking Independence Day:

While most Americans were commemorating the nation’s birthday, racial violence, lawlessness and animosity marred Independence Day celebrations in Georgia, Florida, Ohio, California and Illinois.

Chris Rock started the day off with a bang: “Happy white peoples Independence Day,” he tweeted. “The slaves weren’t free but I’m sure they enjoyed fireworks.”

In Chicago, Ill., some were enjoying the celebration until they were set upon by a mob of dozens of black people intent on violence. One man was taken to the hospital, where he remains in good condition. Eleven black people were arrested and charged with assault.

As is often the case, the mainstream media did not report the mob was black. Witnesses and others took to the Internet to set the record straight.

July 8 brought a pair of Flaherty rants. The first focused on "increasingly visible and brutish mayhem" from "black mobs" in "one of America’s 'whitest big cities'," Seattle.

The second was headlined "Black mob ... in the Hamptons?"

Maybe the 750 black people fighting early this morning in the Hamptons village of Riverhead, N. were upset at the light sentence handed out to the man who broke into rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs’ nearby home.

Or maybe they were exercising their right “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Or maybe that is just how they roll in Riverhead.

We may never know, because, except for the bare bones, the newspapers are not reporting it and the police are not saying.

Of course, we know how Flaherty and WND roll -- demonize black people in order to make their largely white readership afraid of them.

Perhaps sensing that such sustained race-baiting was perhaps not looking good to people who aren't in said WND readership, Flaherty's July 10 article -- which repeated an unsubstantiated claim that "99.9 percent" of defendants in "murders, rapes, robberies and home invasions" in one city were "Afro-American" -- began with an editor's note:

Editor’s note: Colin Flaherty has done more reporting than any other journalist on what appears to be a nationwide trend of skyrocketing black-on-white crime, violence and abuse. WND features these reports to counterbalance the virtual blackout by the rest of the media due to their concerns that reporting such incidents would be inflammatory or even racist. WND considers it racist not to report racial abuse solely because of the skin color of the perpetrators or victims.

But isn't it just as racist to report only violence committed by blacks, as WND and Flaherty have been doing? They doesn't seem to want to answer that question, apparently more happy to pretend it's offering "balance" when WND's record on such issues is hardly stellar.

Note also WND's weasel words claiming that there "appears to be a nationwide trend of skyrocketing black-on-white crime, violence and abuse." Not that there actually is one -- WND is clearly interested only in appearance, not fact.

Further, nowhere does Flaherty or WND demonstrate that every single incident they write about is "racial abuse." Because an alleged criminal is a certain race does not necessarily make the crimes they commit "racial."

WND repeated the "editor's note" on a July 14 article by Flaherty touting how an obscure "teenage video blogger from Milwaukee" complaining about "our own people acting that way."

Even though Flaherty's race-baiting is pretty blatant, he managed to score a minor coup when right-wing columnist Thomas Sowell devoted his July 17 column -- published by WND, of course -- to making one long endorsement of Flaherty's self-published book "White Girl Bleed A Lot":

Reading Colin Flaherty’s book made painfully clear to me that the magnitude of this problem is even greater than I had discovered from my own research. He documents both the race riots and the media and political evasions in dozens of cities across America.

Flaherty’s previous writings have won him praise and awards, but this book has been met largely with silence or abuse. However much ignoring the ugly realities his book reveal may serve the interests of the media or politicians, a cover-up is a huge disservice to everyone else – whether black, white or whatever.

Sowell, who is black, appears to swallow Flaherty's premise whole without questioning why a white writer like Flaherty would be working so closely with a white-dominated "news" outlet like WND to paint all blacks as violent thugs.

The one thing we can glean from all of this: If you white people out there need confirmation for your lizard brain that all blacks are scary and out to rob and/or kill you, Colin Flaherty and WND are happy to oblige.