You may have already heard about this week’s bomb attack on the Colorado Springs office of the NAACP – there’s been a bit of local and national coverage, though it’s paled in comparison to coverage of the attacks on France’s Charlie Hebdo magazine. Here are a few places I’ve found that have covered America’s latest terrorist attack (feel free to add to this in the comments if you know of anything I’ve missed).
Shaun King is always worth reading:
Thankfully, no injuries were reported, but the fear it struck in the local community and in citizens concerned for issues of racial justice everywhere were felt immediately. In 1951, NAACP leaders Harry and Harriet Moore were killed when their Florida home was bombed by domestic terrorists on Christmas Day. No suspects were ever convicted, charged, or even arrested for their murders.
Just 12 hours before the bomb was detonated in Colorado Springs, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund publicly announced it was asking Missouri Circuit Court Judge Maura McShane to consider appointing a special prosecutor in the case against former Ferguson Police officer Darren Wilson. While we have no way of knowing if the bomb was a direct result of the announcement, the timing makes it a real possibility.
In a time when racial tensions in our country appear to be growing, the troubling nature of this act of domestic terrorism should be blatantly obvious, but the lack of mainstream media coverage of the bombing for most of Tuesday morning, afternoon, and night was downright disturbing. CNN released its first piece about the bombing a full 16 hours after it happened, and the incident wasn’t mentioned on national nightly news broadcasts.
By Tuesday night, the hashtag #NAACPBombing was the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter and people were shocked and frustrated that they were just learning of such a disturbing incident and had to learn about it from Twitter so long after it happened.
The Washington Post has more about the (still at-large) suspect in the bombing:
Sanders said investigators were looking for a balding white man in his 40s who may be driving a dirty pickup truck. It could have an open tailgate or a missing or covered license plate.
Investigators Tuesday were examining a red gasoline canister with a yellow nozzle that had been placed next to the explosive device but did not ignite. They also checked pieces of duct tape and metal lying 40 to 50 feet away from the explosion site.
And here’s Newsweek with the most recent updates:
FBI officials speaking to the Los Angeles Times said the explosion that shook the neighborhood “was caused deliberately.”
The FBI, as well as its Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are investigating the incident. “The investigation is ongoing and it is not known at this time if the NAACP or a business in the vicinity was the intended target,” said spokeswoman Sanders in a statement.
NAACP chapter president Henry Allen Jr. was “hesitant” on Tuesday to call the bomb a hate crime until more information is revealed, but he said in an interview with local newspaper The Gazette that the chapter “will not be deterred” by threats.
Tags: domestic terrorism, naacp, news, racism
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Thank you.
Thanks for this. I read about the bombing first on Tumblr. Tumblr. Which is wow.
I’m consistently getting better (if necessarily briefer) news from Twitter than I am from any other source, closely followed by Tumblr, with the putative news sites and channels lagging far behind.
Same here. Read about it first on Tumblr, and in general my Twitter feed has been great for news.
Wow I had no idea. Disturbing. I’m glad no one was injured but infuriated that racist hate-bombing isn’t enough to make the news, or, was enough to keep away from the news. What-in-the-hellll?
It’s the sad (I mean fortunate, of course, but sad that it has to work this way) fact that no one was injured. :/ We would have heard plenty about it if there’d been fatalities.
News person: “Anyone dead? No? How many injured? None? You say white redneck type is the suspect? That’s not news, print something about legal marijuana.”
I’m in Denver, so I’ve seen a lot more coverage of it than people outside the state, but it has been covered quite well by our local news outlets like the Denver Post, as well as CPR, our NPR affiliate station.
I’m extremely glad nobody was hurt, and I’m pretty surprised, given the location of the bomb, that it’s not (yet) being classified a hate crime. I’m not well-versed on the law, but it seems like in a case like this, one would assume it’s a hate crime and dial it back if the motive proves otherwise.
I’m in Denver too, and listen to a LOT of CPR – particularly Morning Edition – and yet still had managed to miss this until this post. Maybe I’m listening at the wrong times? None of my local friends posted anything on social media, it hadn’t come up at work, nothing.
The law is usually the other way, where you charge the crime itself and the hate crime aspect would be an additional charge or enhancement that primarily effects the sentencing. As such, the hate crime charge typically is added on to later, and only when certain legal standards are met. This is prob why people are hesitating to call it what it is almost assuredly is early in the game.
The Denver Post had this story all day yesterday and has a reporter there today. http://dpo.st/1xT2gwM and http://dpo.st/1xT2GTV
yo thank you for putting this together. great idea to compile who is actually reporting on this. the la times picked up on the bombing too, but have been editing the post pretty constantly since i saw it shared (on this very knowledgeable post that touches on the past year of right-wing extremist attacks and the lack of reporting that surrounds them: https://www.facebook.com/chipsinton/posts/2948147… this morning.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-…
yo thank you for putting this together. great idea to compile who is actually reporting on this. the la times picked up on the bombing too, but have been editing the post pretty constantly since i saw it shared (on this very knowledgeable post that touches on the past year of right-wing extremist attacks and the lack of reporting that surrounds them: https://www.facebook.com/chipsinton/posts/2948147… this morning.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-…
“looking for a balding white man in his 40s who may be driving a dirty pickup truck”
well, yeah, obviously
Yeah, but outside of Denver and the elite ski enclaves, that could be practically every middle-aged man in Colorado. They’re gonna need to narrow it down!
Yeah, it’s always amusing to me how police verbal descriptions of suspects always: (i) would fit thousands and thousands of people; and (ii) are pretty much exactly what you imagined the perpetrator looks like!
That could be every middle-aged rural or semi-rural man *in the west*.
"looking for a balding white man in his 40s who may be driving a dirty pickup truck"
well, yeah, obviously
ThinkProgress covered it this morning: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/01/06/36087…
To be fair, the 2011 MLK Day parade bomb in Spokane was reported immediately: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41139894/ns/us_news-cri…
Sorry, I don’t follow. Would you mind restating your point using different words?
I mean that, though I’m myself highly critical of the major newspapers & network news orgs, I was a bit surprised to look back and see how e.g. NBC covered that attempted bombing of 3 years ago. I was particularly surprised to see network reporters using the term “domestic terrorism”; because I don’t think it was used much by journalists after the terroristic acts of Eric Frein in Pennsylvania, last year.
OK. What bearing does the quality of coverage of that case have on the quality of coverage of this one?
To be fair, the 2011 MLK Day parade bomb in Spokane was reported immediately: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41139894/ns/us_news-cri…
Yeah, it's always amusing to me how police verbal descriptions of suspects always: (i) would fit thousands and thousands of people; and (ii) are pretty much exactly what you imagined the perpetrator looks like!
The Colorado Springs Gazette — one of whose reporters won a Pulitzer last year — is covering it http://gazette.com/fbi-says-naacp-explosion-in-co….
ColoradoPols.com (excellent site) has addressed lack of coverage: http://coloradopols.com/diary/66573/springs-naacp…
Denver ABC affiliate: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/colorado-spr…
I mean that, though I'm myself highly critical of the major newspapers & network news orgs, I was a bit surprised to look back and see how e.g. NBC covered that attempted bombing of 3 years ago. I was particularly surprised to see network reporters using the term "domestic terrorism"; because I don't think it was used much by journalists after the terroristic acts of Eric Frein in Pennsylvania, last year.
Although it is infuriating that there has been minimal media coverage, it makes no sense to compare that lack to the blanket coverage of Charlie Hebdo. Zero injuries as compared to twelve deaths more than explains the discrepancy in reporting.
Suspect was a “balding white man in his 40s who may be driving a dirty pickup truck”
Because, of course he was.