Americans Say Media Inspires Attacks on Police

Liberals claim they have no responsibility for the attack on police officers in Dallas, Texas — but a new poll shows many Americans disagree. Indeed, Democrats and their liberal allies attacked conservative criticisms linking their racially charged, anti-police rhetoric to the Dallas shootings as an opportunistic attempt to politicize a tragedy.

The fact that a black man murdered five police officers — after nearly two solid years of a relentless campaign by the liberal media to instill in the hearts and minds of Americans that American law enforcement is fundamentally and inherently racist — has absolutely nothing to do with said campaign, they insist.

“Americans strongly believe … that media coverage is prompting attacks on police.”

A new Rasmussen poll, however, reveals that Americans disagree overwhelmingly, and believe there is a direct link between liberal anti-police propaganda and attacks on police officers.

“Americans strongly believe the media is emphasizing shootings by police officers involving black suspects over ones in which whites are shot and that media coverage is prompting attacks on police,” the polling report concludes.

The new survey found that 62 percent of American adults believe that the media’s coverage of police shootings inspires people to attack the police. And while 22 percent disagree, nearly as many — 16 percent — are unsure.

Only about a third of respondents believed there are more police shootings in America today, and nearly 60 percent believe such incidents have simply become more visible thanks to social media and smartphones.

[lz_table title=”Media Narrative and Attacks on Police” source=”Rasmussen”]Media gives more coverage to black suspects shot by cop
All Americans,71%
Black Americans,55%
White Americans,74%
Non-black Minority Americans,70%
|Media narrative inspires attacks on police
All Americans,62%
Black Americans,59%
White Americans,65%
Non-black Minority Americans,59%
[/lz_table]

The survey also found that 71 percent of Americans believe that if two separate police shootings occurred — one of a black man and one of a white man — the media would give more coverage to the incident in which the suspect shot was black. Only 11 percent believed the opposite, and 13 percent said the coverage would be equal.

The findings confirm that most Americans agree with conservative analysis of the role false liberal narratives have played in recent attacks on police. “Shame on our culture’s influencers who would stir contention and division that could lead to evil such as that in Dallas,” Sarah Palin wrote on her Facebook wall following the attack.

Surprisingly, a majority — albeit slim — of black Americans also agree that the media narrative is negatively affecting community-police relations. Fifty-five percent agreed that the media would give more coverage to a police shooting involving a black suspect.

While this is less than the nearly 75 percent of whites who felt the same, it suggests that liberal narratives about American law enforcement may not be as widely accepted in the black community as some conservative pundits fear. Just over half of blacks, 51 percent, believe that media coverage of police shootings inspires people to attack police officers.

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“The tendency to group local, separate incidents into one greater national phenomenon often doesn’t reveal truth,” noted Greg Gutfield on Fox News on July 8, the day after the attacks in Dallas.

“The Dallas police had no connection at all to those incidents but they took bullets because of them. They suffered for a media narrative,” he said. A majority of Americans of all races realizes and accepts this.