Biased Beat Cops At The MRC

The Media Research Center spent much of the past TV season being angry that TV police shows tried to reflect reality by tackling the thorny issues of racial justice and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd's death.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 7/22/2021

A lot can change in a year. And it seems like no year has brought as much cultural change to America’s TV landscape as the year since African American man George Floyd died at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. In that timeframe, America endured a summer of rioting, the acceleration of cancel culture and attempts to force critical race theory into every aspect of public and even private life.

Unwilling to leave bad enough alone, Hollywood joined in the hate; 127 TV episodes promoted the self-described Marxist Black Lives Matter movement, “Defund The Police” initiatives, and peddled the myth of America as a systemically racist country.

MRC Culture’s TV blog covered the entire year of Black Lives Matter narratives and propaganda forced into TV programming following Floyd’s death and found that there were 127 episodes promoting BLM talking points. Some of the worst moments included characters referring to police as “pigs,” lies that America has been the same racist place for the last “500 years,” and racist smears against white people, arguing that each should feel “personal shame” over the death of George Floyd.

These 127 BLM TV episodes featured propaganda-ridden storylines written to depict racist cops gunning down innocent black people, for example. NBC’s Chicago PD, CW’s Black Lightning and CBS’ FBI: Most Wanted smeared cops in this way.

No mention, of course, of how TV cop shows have spent decades pushing negative portrayals of Blacks and normalized and justified violence by police -- which could also be described as "propaganda-ridden storylines" -- so it could be argued that the past year was a corrective for the past. But no, Hays and Mandelburg had to portray it as a conspiracy:

Again, it was no accident nor mere organic trend that TV exploded with this racist, anti-American propaganda in the last year. It had been done for an expressly political purpose. Kristen Marston, Culture and Entertainment Advocacy Director of the Pro-BLM civil rights non-profit, Color Of Change, stated in an interview with Hollywood Reporter, “What we see on TV, it impacts the way we vote, the way that we react to people and even the way that we either believe Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization or not.”

Take it from Marston. She was actually asked to advise ”over 100 TV shows” on how to help them move away from “unhelpful narratives” regarding police or Black Lives Matter. Her progressive non-profit also compiled a “damning 153-page report” on how entertainment TV depicts crime in such a way that “undermines racial equality,” called Normalizing Injustice.

Um, don't most TV cop shows use actual current or former law enforcement officers as consultants? We don't remember Hays or Mandelburg ever complaining about that.

Indeed, the MRC spent much of the 2020-21 television season complaining that scripted network TV shows that focus on police have taken last summer's real-life events regarding racial justice and policing into consideration. Elise Ehrhard devoted a Nov. 11 post to ranting about one show's treatment of the issue:

This fall's network television line-up of cop shows has begun and that means endless lecturing of the Black Lives Matter narrative. Audiences are being hectored that police officers are inherently racist towards black men and nothing has changed in the U.S. since Jim Crow.

Hollywood has been beating this drum for many years now, from shows with officers shooting innocent black people to cops covering up killings of innocent unarmed black suspects, but they vowed a renewed focus after the death of George Floyd.

The latest installment in the "cops are inherently racist and always will be" genre was the season 4 premiere episode of CBS's S.W.A.T, titled "3 Seventeen Year Olds," on November 11. The premiere was set on the anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Since 1992, major reforms have taken place in the Los Angeles Police Department that have led to substantive improvements. Even corporate media sites like CNN have written pieces acknowledging that the LAPD had "what Harvard researchers would later call one of the most ambitious attempts at police reform ever attempted in an American city."

But you would know absolutely none of that from the conclusion of S.W.A.T.

Karen Townsend complained in a Nov. 12 post: "The eighth season of NBC’s Chicago P.D. began airing on November 11. From the beginning of the first episode, titled 'Fighting Ghosts,' it is obvious that the groundwork is being laid for an ongoing conflict between police reformists and those who want to protect racist, corrupt cops." She then attacked the show for "portraying the police as racists and always the ones in the wrong." Given that the previous time the MRC devoted a post to the show was 2017 (when it complained about an episode regarding illegal immigrants), we're pretty sure it does not "always" portray police as "in the wrong."

The same day, Lindsay Kornick groused about another cop show reflecting current events in an episode based on the notorious Central Park dog walker story, with added racial profiling. "No, this wouldn’t have happened if people didn’t assume every cop was an evil racist. More importantly, this wouldn’t have happened if networks weren’t so desperate to appeal to BLM activists that they claim the characters in a show over twenty years old are now racist," Kornick huffed.

Ehrhard hate-watched "S.W.A.T." again for a Nov. 25 post, which featured "another BLM storyline, with a discussion of the movement to defund the police," further huffing that the storyline "only fuels the dangerous police abolitionist mentality that is causing the greater loss of life in our country.

Even non-cop shows were not immune from the MRC's lashing out. Ehrhard devoted a Nov. 16 post to grumbling about the "woke legal drama" "All Rise" for "repeating the Black Lives Matter narrative," declaring, "This is the poison Hollywood pushes on our culture to sow constant racial division."

Kornick complained in a Jan. 3 post:

Looks like CBS’s NCIS: New Orleans will spend its 2021 doubling down on false liberal propaganda. While the show already bent over backwards to claim police officers are killing young black men last month, the latest episode somehow went further to appease a “burn the establishment” progressive and her mostly “peaceful” crowd.

Kornick further complained that one character "even goes so far as to peddle the usual lie that the “vast majority” of BLM protestors are just peaceful idealists being dragged by a few bad actors. She linked to a right-wing Townhall.com post ridiculing a study finding that 93 percent of protests did not result in rioting -- a "vast majority" by any definition and, thus, not a "usual lie." (Ironically, the MRC would be using this exact same argument a few days later to distance conservatives from the right-wing Capitol rioters, even though both were clearly on the same pro-Trump side.)

Rebecca Downs went after a different show, "The Rookie," grumbling on Jan. 4 that the show "aims to get political on policing" by discussing racial issues and that one show writer said that it "can’t do one special episode, where we feel good and solve racism in the end, and then go back to our usual thing the next week. We want to change things for as long as we get to do this show.” This was followed by her complaint on Jan. 11 that the show "revealed a new 'polarizing' character, veteran officer Doug Stanton (Brandon Routh) and his hit-you-over-the-head racial profiling. The episode also featured interactions between titular character Officer John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and James Murray (Arjay Smith), a local black man, while Nolan's assigned to a community policing center."

Downs' anger continued as the show's storyline did, ranting on Jan. 18 that the latest episode featured how that "polarizing" officer character "physically assaults an innocent young black man who does not match the description of their suspect, then threatens to arrest the man's entire family for trying to intervene while pointing his gun at them all in an over-the-top scene, with the rookie he is training, Officer Jackson West (Titus Makin Jr.), uncomfortably watching it all." She concluded by huffing that "it looks like next Sunday we can enjoy what is, at best, another increasingly crowded, melodramatic, and poorly written episode of The Rookie." The next week, Downs groused that the character was "a white racist cop personified," adding that "Our main characters may want Stanton gone, but he also is a veteran of the job who knows a thing or two."

Ehrhard returned to bashing another show in a Jan. 26 post:

CBS's woke court drama All Rise has spent all season pushing BLM propaganda. One lie that Black Lives Matter promotes is the myth that America's first police departments were created to capture fugitive slaves. The leader of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York< even said on Fox News that the first police departments were used as "slave patrols." One way that leftism attempts to destroy American institutions is by lying about their founding.

BLM's claim is demonstrably false. The first pre-Civil War police departments were created in Boston, New York and Philadelphia and their creation had nothing to do with capturing runaway slaves. But facts never stopped Hollywood from promoting BLM myths.

No, it's not "demonstrably false." Northern big-city police departments may not have been founded on capturing slaves, but historians point out that Southern cities had slave patrols that predated police departments' founding, and that all such police operations were created to enforce the existing social hierarchy before evolving into a force for protection starting in the late 19th century.

On Feb. 14, Ehrhard complained that another show pointed out that last summer's protests were mostly peaceful: "Television shows this year just have characters keep saying over and over again that the protests are peaceful, really, really peaceful. Did they ever hear of Shakespeare's warning, 'I think thou doth protest too much'? If protests were genuinely peaceful, Hollywood writers would not have to keep telling audiences that." She concluded by sneering out the MRC's nasty narrative: "BLM and Antifa protests have been a poisonous exercise in domestic terrorism and no amount of Hollywood lying should ever cause Americans to forget it."

Downs returned on Feb. 22 to bash "The Rookie" some more: "For weeks, ABC’s The Rookie hit viewers over the head with the evils of racist white cops, personified through Officer Doug Stanton (Brandon Routh). While Officer Stanton may be gone, the show is just getting started on the racial white guilt."

Slusher served up another typical rant on March 6:

CBS’s Magnum P.I. reboot teased viewers in Friday night’s episode, “The Long Way Home,” by making it seem like they might follow in the footsteps of their fellow cop drama Blue Bloods and depict the unfair treatment police and their loved ones are facing in today’s anti-cop culture. But sadly, they not only dropped the ball, they kicked it out of the park by instead stating, “the system is broken,” and defending BLM activism, which has led to violence and riots, as “a form of patriotism.”

[...]

I guess it was too much to hope for there to be more than one show in Hollywood willing to defend the hard work, dedication, and sacrifice of the majority of good police officers.

Julia A. Seymour went after a hospital drama, "New Amsterdam," on March 24 for an episode in which a nurse said that police were “just a different kind of unsafe” than violent patients, declaring this to be "anti-cop." Four days later, she groused: "In order to show Chicago cops in the worst possible light, Showtime’s Shameless made up a rule observed by the police force – "We're here to serve and protect the rich," going on to sneer, "This is the last season of Shameless. Frankly, I don’t think it will be missed."

Kornick complained on April 15:

Anyone who thought Law & Order: Special Victims Unit was finished with kowtowing to Black Lives Matter will be severely disappointed. The latest episode of the NBC drama reminds that there’s always time to scold the police, just like there’s always time to call new voting laws racist.
[...]

Funny how when Portland and Minneapolis are set on fire by BLM and Antifa activists, Law & Order still finds time to have not one, not two, but three episodes warning viewers about white supremacists and other conspiracy groups. NBC does know they can criticize both, right?

Elise Ehrhard served up a full-on anti-BLM screed on April 20 that had little to do with the show in question and everything to do with pushing a right-wing narrative:

Network television has officially jumped the shark in its desperate efforts to defend the domestic terrorist organization Black Lives Matter. This week on CBS's court drama Bull, an earnest defense attorney actually said with a straight face that BLM is "not opposed to the police."

[...]

Black Lives Matter protest slogans include "ACAB" ("All Cops Are Bastards") and “Fuck 12” ("Fuck the Police"). If those slogans are not "anti-law enforcement," I do not know what is. And considering that in 2019 the number of unarmed black men fatally shot by police in the United States was a total of 14 people in a country of 330 million, BLM was never really about addressing a supposed epidemic of evil cops targeting black men. BLM was a corporate shakedown operation that used terror to rake in billions for its founders and Democrat Party [sic] entities.

[...]

Violence does indeed follow BLM wherever it goes. Its "mostly peaceful protests" have left a tragic trail of billions of dollars in damage, dozens dead, and many more injured. Such violence is likely to continue in the coming months, especially with the George Floyd murder trial wrapping up and people like Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) encouraging more violence.

But Hollywood cannot dare let that truth come out of the mouths of its shows' main characters. The role of television heroes in 2020 and 2021 are to keep pushing the same lies that legacy media pushed all last year about BLM protests being "mostly peaceful." And as the gaslighting continues, more innocent communities will be terrorized while BLM founders buy more mansions.

Ehrhard returned to grouse on April 22 that "CBS's cop drama S.W.A.T. signaled to its audience this week that those who question critical race theory and the Black Lives Matter agenda are really white supremacists. ... As long as Hollywood continues playing these sort of games with their messaging, Americans will feel afraid to speak up about real issues that harm all Americans for fear of being lumped-in with genuine villains. This twisted media and entertainment tactic makes authentic dialogue in our country impossible."

Of course, the MRC's knee-jerk binary narrative that all cops are good and all protesters against police brutality are violent and evil (see above Ehrhard screed) isn't exactly encouraging authentic dialogue either.

"Blue Bloods" safe space

The MRC had to work to find a show that reflected its pro-police, anti-racial justice narrative. But Kornick did, and gushed all over it in a Dec. 5 post:

Despite an occasional dip into political correctness, CBS’s Blue Bloods usually takes the rare stance in defending the police in media. Thankfully, the latest episode continues that trend with the show standing up against the charge of “systemic racism” in the NYPD at the height of anti-copaganda. Christmas season is truly the time for miracles.

[...]

It shouldn’t be so bold that a TV police officer would defend his own profession, but after Chicago P.D. and Law & Order: SVU both surrendered to the anti-cop narrative, Frank Reagan is clearly the exception not the rule for cops in 2020 television. Let’s hope he can continue to be exceptional the rest of this season as well.

Not surprising coming from a "media research" outfit that sought to demonize all Black Lives Matter supporters as Antifa terrorists.

A Jan. 25 post by Dawn Slusher cheered, "Leave it to CBS’s excellent hit cop drama Blue Bloods to confront anti-police sentiment head-on and depict how it affects not only officers, but their families, as well," calling the show "a breath of fresh air in an industry that refuses to recognize the humanity of police officers and how they sacrifice their lives to keep us safe."

The MRC even found one of the shows it attacked for serving up normal (for right-wing activists) pro-cop, anti-BLM propaganda. Ehrhard gushed on April 8:

Could common sense actually be returning to network television cop shows? Are some Hollywood scriptwriters waking-up to the insanity of the left's radical anti-police activism?

CBS's normally BLM-friendly cop drama S.W.A.T called out the anti-police crowd's woke hypocrisy and unfairness in this week's episode, 'Sins of the Father,' on April 7. In the episode, quintessential good guy Sgt. Deacon Kay (Jay Harrington) was excited about his son's school career day. Deacon planned to speak to the kids about his work as a police officer. Then he got a call from his son's teacher telling him the parents do not want a cop presenting to their kids.

[...]

So while a show like S.W.A.T. has too often pushed BLM propaganda to placate the woke Hollywood powers that be, they deserve credit for sneaking in certain truths this time around.

Four days later, Ehrhard was back in her "Blue Bloods" safe space:

Throughout the 2020-21 television season, Blue Bloods has been the rare network cop show that has refused to kowtow to the woke BLM mob.

The show did it again this week with an episode that called-out politicians and media for condemning cops based on civilian complaints devoid of any context.

[...]

Wow, a show that asks the public to see the full picture and try to see the complex and dangerous situations police officers face every day. That is radical in an age when Black Lives Matter torches cities, vilifies officers and demands communities defund police departments.

[...]

Blue Bloods is a unique network show with a conservative star in which a close-knit family regularly gathers around the dinner table and says grace before eating. If it is not renewed, network television will mostly be left with woke cops shows that are now prone to seeing the boys in blue as the villains.

That's the kind of propaganda the MRC loves.

Late-season outrage

As the TV season wound down, the MRC has also continued to complain about individual shows, even throwing some non-cop shows in the mix in an apparent attempt to pump up the numbers (and the manufactured outrage):

• Before the May 4 episode of super producer Dick Wolf's FBI: Most Wanted, “Criminal Justice,” even began, we knew it was going to be yet another Black Lives Matter themed show. -- Alexa Moutevelis, May 5
• At this point, which shows haven’t catered to Black Lives Matters in some way? The CW’s Kung Fu re-imagining following a Chinese-American woman returning to her hometown of San Francisco after a journey to China is only the latest to fall prey to the BLM message, even after almost criticizing it. -- Lindsay Kornick, May 5
• We’ve already seen Hollywood use fictional stories to paint the police as violent racists, but Wednesday’s episode of the CW’s Nancy Drew might take first place for the most over-the-top and racially divisive anti-police storyline. Not only were police vilified, but a few white suspects who aren’t officers were thrown in as evil participants who harassed an innocent black woman for good measure. -- Dawn Slusher, May 6
• On Wednesday, it was ABC’s A Million Little Things’ turn to create fear and division with lines like, “As a Black woman, I don't feel safe in my own body anywhere,” and, “There are police out there looking for a reason to take your life.” -- Dawn Slusher, May 13
• NBC's Law and Order: Organized Crime opened this week's episode with an over-the-top scene of a New York City police officer crushing the bones in an innocent, unarmed black man's hand. ... I cannot imagine how hard it must be for police officers throughout the country to turn on the television and regularly see the boys in blue portrayed as the enemy by a pampered Hollywood elite that can afford private security. -- Elise Ehrhard, May 13
• The CW’s high school football drama All American picked up where it left off last week, dealing with the aftermath following the shooting death of an innocent, young, black woman, Tamika Pratt, by police. And if you thought the show couldn’t possibly have any more disdain for the police than they did before, you’d be very wrong, as they claimed the police system is “predicated on [black people’s] oppression since the beginning” and that people of color are “being hunted” by the police. ... The left is creating hate, division and fear and their “plan” has no good outcome for anyone. Not for black businesses that have been burned and looted by BLM protesters, not for the innocent black and white lives that have been taken during BLM protests and in the subsequent rise in crime, not for the innocent officers who continue risking their lives to protect us, not for race relations in this country, and not for black people themselves. Nothing and no one wins in their narrative except chaos, anarchy and hate. -- Dawn Slusher, May 18
• Law and Order: Organized Crime pushed the Black Lives Matter narrative again this week, claiming that police officers randomly kill innocent young black men without consequence. ... Black Lives Matter's paranoid lies about police officers have led to real police officers being murdered by BLM fanatics. In the fictionalized Law and Order: Organized Crime universe, it lead to the murder of a cop's wife. I doubt the show's writers have the self-awareness to realize the episode did not quite make the point they thought it was making. -- Elise Ehrhard, May 21
• Season three of Showtime's The Chi was purposefully devoid of the police, even while a major storyline revolved around the disappearance of a black woman, and one episode featured a disturbing scene showing what sex trafficked and drug addicted young women endure. The season four premiere changes all of that when a 15-year-old is the victim of police brutality during the May 23 episode, “Soul Food.” ... After a unique season with no police, The Chi just jumped the shark and became like every other show on television with an anti-police Black Lives Matter storyline. -- Alexa Moutevelis, May 24
• ABC’s A Million Little Things has added to the count of 127 episodes on television that have pushed Black Lives Matter since George Floyd’s death with their third straight week of BLM-themed episodes. In Wednesday's episode, “Not Alone,” one character claims that black Americans must wear an “armor” that gets heavier “every time another innocent black person is killed.” -- Dawn Slusher, May 27
• Three episodes into season four of Showtime’s The Chi and it looks like the war with the police is here to stay. Last week’s episode saw Mayor Otis ‘Douda’ Perry (Curtiss Cook) looking to defund the police after 15-year-old Jake Taylor (Michael Epps) was assaulted by the police in the season opener. In the June 6 episode, “Native Son,” Douda enlists the help of Tracy (Tai Davis) and Trig (Luke James), providing them with the money that normally goes to the police budget so that they can run their own version of 911. Seriously. -- Alexa Moutevelis, June 7
• The Showtime "comedy" Black Monday claimed this week that all cops except police dogs are white supremacists. The show, set in the 1980s, regularly attacks Christians, conservatives and Republicans. This week, the writers could not resist also tossing in contemporary BLM anti-police rhetoric despite the 1980s setting. -- Elise Ehrhard, June 13

Hays and Mandelburg concluded their summary --a somewhat lazy effort, since it essentially just updates a February post by Matt Philbin offering similar complaints and citing some of the same examples -- by declaring: "It’s clear that this is all being done to change your perceptions about your country and its history. And it's all being broadcast into the safety of your suburban home. It’s way past time to just turn the television off." As if the MRC is not paying them to change perceptions about BLM and black people in general.