We’ve documented how the Media Research Center has gotten upset that police-related dramas on TV are taking the ripped-from-the-headlines approach in addressing recent controversies over police brutality that don’t adhere to the MRC’s pro-police, anti-reform agenda. You will not be surprised to learn that the complaining has continued. Lindsay Kornick complained in a Jan. 3 post:
Looks like CBS’s NCIS: New Orleans will spend its 2021 doubling down on false liberal propaganda. While the show already bent over backwards to claim police officers are killing young black men last month, the latest episode somehow went further to appease a “burn the establishment” progressive and her mostly “peaceful” crowd.
Kornick further complained that one character “even goes so far as to peddle the usual lie that the “vast majority” of BLM protestors are just peaceful idealists being dragged by a few bad actors. She linked to a right-wing Townhall.com post ridiculing a study finding that 93 percent of protests did not result in rioting — a “vast majority” by any definition and, thus, not a “usual lie.” (Ironically, the MRC would be using this exact same argument a few days later to distance conservatives from the right-wing Capitol rioters, even though both were clearly on the same pro-Trump side.)
Rebecca Downs went after a different show, “The Rookie,” grumbling on Jan. 4 that the show “aims to get political on policing” by discussing racial issues and that one show writer said that it “can’t do one special episode, where we feel good and solve racism in the end, and then go back to our usual thing the next week. We want to change things for as long as we get to do this show.” This was followed by her complaint on Jan. 11 that the show”revealed a new “ polarizing” character, veteran officer Doug Stanton (Brandon Routh) and his hit-you-over-the-head racial profiling. The episode also featured interactions between titular character Officer John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and James Murray (Arjay Smith), a local black man, while Nolan’s assigned to a community policing center.”
Downs’ anger continued as the show’s storyline did, ranting on Jan. 18 that the latest episode featured how that “polarizing” officer character “physically assaults an innocent young black man who does not match the description of their suspect, then threatens to arrest the man’s entire family for trying to intervene while pointing his gun at them all in an over-the-top scene, with the rookie he is training, Officer Jackson West (Titus Makin Jr.), uncomfortably watching it all.” She concluded by huffing that “it looks like next Sunday we can enjoy what is, at best, another increasingly crowded, melodramatic, and poorly written episode of The Rookie.” The next week, Downs groused that the character was “a white racist cop personified,” adding that “Our main characters may want Stanton gone, but he also is a veteran of the job who knows a thing or two.”
Elise Ehrhard bashed another show in a Jan. 26 post:
CBS’s woke court drama All Rise has spent all season pushing BLM propaganda. One lie that Black Lives Matter promotes is the myth that America’s first police departments were created to capture fugitive slaves. The leader of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York< even said on Fox News that the first police departments were used as “slave patrols.” One way that leftism attempts to destroy American institutions is by lying about their founding.
BLM’s claim is demonstrably false. The first pre-Civil War police departments were created in Boston, New York and Philadelphia and their creation had nothing to do with capturing runaway slaves. But facts never stopped Hollywood from promoting BLM myths.
No, it’s not “demonstrably false.” Northern big-city police departments may not have been founded on capturing slaves, but historians point out that Southern cities had slave patrols that predated police departments’ founding, and that all such police operations were created to enforce the existing social hierarchy before evolving into a force for protection starting in the late 19th century.
On Feb. 14, Ehrhard complained that another show pointed out that last summer’s protests were mostly peaceful: “Television shows this year just have characters keep saying over and over again that the protests are peaceful, really, really peaceful. Did they ever hear of Shakespeare’s warning, ‘I think thou doth protest too much’? If protests were genuinely peaceful, Hollywood writers would not have to keep telling audiences that.” She concluded by sneering out the MRC’s nasty narrative: “BLM and Antifa protests have been a poisonous exercise in domestic terrorism and no amount of Hollywood lying should ever cause Americans to forget it.”
Downs returned on Feb. 22 to bash “The Rookie” some more: “For weeks, ABC’s The Rookie hit viewers over the head with the evils of racist white cops, personified through Officer Doug Stanton (Brandon Routh). While Officer Stanton may be gone, the show is just getting started on the racial white guilt.”
Kornick, meanwhile, ranted about a yet another show in a Feb. 21 post: “CW’s Batwoman may have a new lead, but the politics are as bad as ever. With several subtle victimization jabs in the past few episodes, the superhero series finally makes a bold move by supporting the ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) movement. Again, this is supposed to be our hero, ladies and gentlemen.”
Fortunately for the MRC, there’s still one show on TV that reliably pushes its right-wing agenda. A Jan. 25 post by Dawn Slusher cheered, “Leave it to CBS’s excellent hit cop drama Blue Bloods to confront anti-police sentiment head-on and depict how it affects not only officers, but their families, as well,” calling the show “a breath of fresh air in an industry that refuses to recognize the humanity of police officers and how they sacrifice their lives to keep us safe.”