There were plenty of good candidates for Story of the Week this week, such as the expansion of the GOP 2016 candidate field and the Muhammad cartoon show shooting in Texas. But, as events surrounding and following the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore have dominated the news for over a week, some deeper Opinion articles have had time to surface, so we thought we'd take the opportunity to show some of the diversity of that coverage today.
Snippets from the Right
Wall Street Journal-Opinion
"There is another view. In this view, the disaster of inner cities isn’t primarily about race at all. It’s about the consequences of 50 years of progressive misrule—which on race has proved an equal-opportunity failure.
Baltimore is but the latest liberal-blue city where government has failed to do the one thing it ought—i.e., put the cops on the side of the vulnerable and law-abiding—while pursuing 'solutions' that in practice enfeeble families and social institutions and local economies.
These supposed solutions do this by substituting federal transfers for fathers and families. They do it by favoring community organizing and government projects over private investment. And they do it by propping up failing public-school systems that operate as jobs programs for the teachers unions instead of centers of learning."
Snippets from the Left
Salon
"It’s most definitely not the place of a White person to tell the Black Lives Matter protesters how to run a revolution, whether in Ferguson, New York City, Baltimore, or anywhere else. Because that is what this is: a revolution. Yes, a CVS was burned down and a mall was looted, and chaos broke out. But where was our outrage during the subprime mortgage crisis that left Baltimore devastated and its inhabitants homeless and scrambling? And where was the righteous rage when a bunch of White kids tore apart Keane, New Hampshire and lit the town on fire because of … pumpkins? Pumpkins!!
Yet, here we are, more enraged over a burned-down CVS than a Black man’s life being taken from him because he dared to make eye contact with police and run in the United States of America. Incidentally, look who was cleaning up and restoring order in Baltimore: the protesters and residents themselves. But the media doesn’t focus on that."
Snippets from the Center
CNN
"In his first interview after Gray's death, Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts told CNN's Evan Perez that the community lacks trust in law enforcement, and police must acknowledge that 'we are part of the problem.'
'The community needs to hear that,' he said. 'The community needs to hear from us that we haven't been part of the solution, and now we have to evolve. Now we have to change.
…
He wouldn't discuss the details of Gray's death, saying that while he'd like to make as much information public as possible to 'take some of the steam out' of the community's anger, the state's attorney's case might be harmed if too much is released.'"