There were a few problems with this story. First, Trump fans are not exactly the chief demographic for “Empire” (Nielsen estimates the show’s audience is 61 percent black). Second, Chicago is not exactly MAGA (Make America Great Again) country — only 12.5 percent of votes cast for president in 2016 went to Trump. Third, Smollett never lost control of his sandwich. Fourth, Smollett then waited 40 minutes to report the attack. Fifth, when the police asked for his phone to verify his claim that his manager had heard the attack, he refused.
Nonetheless, the Smollett attack dominated media coverage for weeks, with Smollett appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to castigate his doubters as racists. Actress Ellen Page told Stephen Colbert’s late-night talk-show audience that the attack was Mike Pence’s fault. CNN’s Brooke Baldwin lamented, “This is America in 2019.”
Except it wasn’t. Smollett, it turned out, allegedly paid two of his friends to stage the attack. Smollett’s story, then, was false. The media allowed it to flower — and propped up Smollett’s claims that doubters were bigots — because it fit their narrative of America as deeply racist and homophobic in the era of Donald Trump. Even after the story fell apart, commentator Liz Plank of Vox appeared on CNN to explain, “There has been an increase in hate crimes against the LGBTQ community, against Muslims, against black people.”
Plank did not mention the group most bedeviled by an increase in reported hate crimes: Jews. Reported hate crime incidents and offenses against blacks rose between 2016 and 2017 approximately 13 percent; against LGBTQ people, 4 percent; against Muslims, 17 percent; against Jews, 26 percent. On a per capita basis, Jews are by far the most targeted group in the United States, about four times as likely to be targeted as black Americans, and twice as likely as LGBTQ Americans and Muslim Americans.
Last weekend, the front...“The media care more about hate crimes that fit their narrative.”
