-------- Original Message --------
Subject: All's fair
From: David Brankley <kleybran@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, November 9, 2015, 8:37 AM
To: "mary@telluridenews com" <mary@telluridenews.com>
CC:


    Dorothy Bland is Dean of the Mayburn school of Journalism at North Texas University. On October 24 Bland, who is black, was walking in her  neighborhood in Corinth, a suburb of Dallas , she was stopped by white police officers while walking for exercise. Her encounter was so upsetting that she wrote a piece that appeared in the the Dallas Morning News as an op-ed a few days later. In the piece she described what it was like to be racially profiled. "Knowing that police officers are armed with guns and are a lot bigger than my 5 foot 4 inches, I had no interest in my life's story playing out like Trayvon Martin's death. I stopped and asked the officers if there was a problem; I don't remember getting a decent answer before one of the officers asked where I lived and for identification.", she wrote." I guess I was simply a brown face in an affluent neighborhood. I told the police I didn't like to walk in the rain, and one of them told me, '  My dog doesn't like to walk in the rain.' Ouch!" She went on to say ," Walking while black is a crime in many jurisdictions. May God have mercy on our nation."
      Dr. Ben Carson, as you may know is also black. He is running for president, and in this strangest of all races, his is currently running ahead of all contenders among Republicans. Whenever there is a new front runner there will always follow increased scrutiny. Past speeches will be sifted through for errors and contradictions, and flip flops noted. That's only as it should be. We shouldn't decide on the best man or woman strictly by what their campaign says about them. The problem with Carson is how little track record he has left behind for our scrutiny. He's new to politics and has never held, or even run for office before. Do we judge him as a neurosurgeon instead? You see the problem.
      The one area that he has cornered in this race is a reputation for honesty and trustworthiness. On this attribute he stands alone in the poles, far ahead of others. You might say he has a natural advantage going for him that mere politicians and reality show stars cannot hope to gain. Over the last week some in the press have sought to turn this advantage into his downfall. CNN and Politco have been pouring through his autobiography, the subject of a film starring Cuba Gooding Jr., looking for possible falsehoods and misrepresentations. CNN has tried to verify a story he tells about his fourteen year old self attempting to stab a friend in a fit of rage. Not able to track down the unnamed friend, they've judged the story false and play up this dubious supposition unmercifully throughout the network. Politico has gone even further from the path of responsible journalism ,accusing him of making up a story about being accepted to West Point on scholarship, a claim he didn't actually make. They compounded their mistreatment of the facts by claiming that the campaign had admitted to their reporter that Carson had lied about the incident, a claim they soon retracted. The retraction followed the false story being picked up and repeated by almost every major news source in the country.
       All's fair in love and politics, the saying goes. Wrong on both counts. If anyone looses credibility over these incidents it ought to be the reporters involved ,as well as the agencies they represent, and not Dr. Carson. If there is any justice left in this sad tawdry world of politics and journalism then that is how this affair will play out. I've given up hoping for fairness, but I'm still holding out for justice.
       Meanwhile, will there be justice for poor Dorothy Bland? Maybe. After her op-ed appeared the Corinth police department released dash-cam video of the incident she spoke of. It seems it did not go down quite the way she described. In the unedited three minute video the police were as polite and professional as we would wish all police to be. She was not stopped because of her race. The chip on her shoulder ,evident in the video ,may have got her into exactly the sort of ugly situation she dreaded. As it is, thousands who have seen it are asking for her dismissal from NTU.