HB: Given all of this that you lay out, how is it today that the media is still so biased and does not report the key facts that expose all this injustice?
LW: Because the media of today is like the mainstream white media has always
been in this country. They accept a basic narrative and do not deviate from that.
You have to understand that in 1970, a group published a report on the Philly media and it said they reflexively take the side of the police and the prosecutors anytime there is an allegation of police brutality. This is 1970. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that Philadelphia’s media started covering police brutality. The local white media started reporting on brutality after the Inquirer started reporting on it. The Inquirer subsequently won a Pulitzer Prize for that coverage. But before that, they ignored it.
Now I’m not just telling you that from scholarly research and examination. I’m telling you what I know from experience.
From 1975 on, I worked as a reporter covering police brutality. From 1975-78 when I
worked for the Philadelphia Tribune (a black newspaper), almost every other day people would come into our office beaten and bloody. The blood was dried on their faces and clothes.
The police refused to allow these brutality victims to file brutality complaints. They would go to the Inquirer in an attempt to talk to a reporter, but they couldn’t get through the door. The Daily News was the same way. Then, they’d go across town to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, and still couldn’t get through the door. Finally they’d come to the Philadelphia Tribune and they would get through the door. So, I know from personal experience that the mainstream Philadelphia media refused to cover police brutality and really many other issues involving race. They’ll only write about it superficially.
Listen. Why is it that the media in Philadelphia can occasionally cover issues involving police brutality, but never say that there is a pattern and practice of it? Why do they treat these incidents of police brutality as “isolated incidents” instead of examples of an endemic problem?
The Inquirer also won a Pulitzer Prize writing a story about a man who had been falsely convicted of murder, and their coverage got him out of jail and others. So all these examples they’ve written about people being falsely incarcerated, mistreated by police and prosecutors—which shows a pattern—why is it, then, that they stop and say “Yes, all these improprieties have happened, but it doesn’t have any effect at all on the Mumia Abu-Jamal case.”
HB: You and Mumia both covered the MOVE 9 trial. Looking back at it, what
things about the trial remain most vivid in your mind?
LW: To clarify, I covered the preliminary aspects of the MOVE 9 trial, but I did not cover the trial itself. I covered a few parts of the trial when MOVE was actually representing itself. That right of self-representation was revoked, and I think correctly because MOVE was not really trying to represent themselves, but rather to “put the system on trial.” That may be okay, but when your body is in danger of going to jail for a long time, I think you should direct your attention to the evidence (or lack thereof ) and try to get yourself off.
One of my most vivid memories was of MOVE’s house being destroyed around 1:30 that afternoon, just hours after MOVE’s arrest. The shoot out had stopped around 10:30, and the last MOVE person was out around 11:00.
The police had dumped 250,000 gallons of water into the basement. I know this because I was hiding behind the pumping truck that they used for the water cannon when the shooting started. I was talking to the guy as he was pumping the water in. So I know how much water went into that basement. It was a darkened basement filled with water and tear gas, and you can not adequately do an investigation of that within a few hours. Yet police claimed they conducted a thorough investigation and then they tore the compound down.
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