- revise (an aspect of a fictional work) retrospectively, typically by introducing a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events."I think fans get more upset when characters act blatantly out of established type, or when things get retconned"…(Oxford Languages);——————————————————————————————————————
POST: 'The retconning of George Floyd,' by Radley Balko, published on 'The Watch' on January 31, 2024. (Investigative journalist. Proprietor of The Watch newsletter. Ex-Washington Post. Author of Rise of the Warrior Cop, co-author of The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist.)
SUB-HEADING: "Bari Weiss's Free Press is the latest outlet to tout a conspiratorial documentary alleging that Derek Chauvin was wrongly convicted. It's all nonsense."
GIST: As this is a very lengthy analysis, here is a taste of this important substack. (It can be read in its entirety at the link below. HL): "These defenses of Chauvin continued sporadically, then got a boost in August 2022 when Liz Collin, a Minneapolis TV reporter and the wife of infamous Minneapolis police union leader Bob Kroll, self-published the book They’re Lying: The Media, The Left, and The Death of George Floyd. Collin had been a longtime anchor for the CBS affiliate in Minneapolis. Both she and Kroll were targeted by activists after Floyd’s death, including protests outside their home. Collin left the station in January 2022. Depending on who you believe, she was either forced out or resigned after she was removed from the anchor position. She then joined a conservative-funded outlet called Alpha News. Collin’s book provided further fuel for far-right bomb throwers and conspiracy theorists, but her allegations didn’t really take off until she, Alpha News, and a former police officer named J.C. Chaix made The Fall of Minneapolis, a crowd-sourced documentary based on the book. TFOM makes some nutty claims, including that the FBI ordered George Floyd’s autopsy to be altered to incriminate Chauvin, an allegation that echoes the contempt southern coroners had for FBI investigators looking into lynchings and the murder of activists during the civil rights era. Collin also interviews Chauvin, Chauvin’s mother, Chauvin’s lawyer, and a half dozen or so current and former Minneapolis police officers who still support Chauvin. By last October, far-right white grievance mongers like Carlson had been amplifying Collin for months. Carlson dedicated portions of his show — which by then was hosted on X — to pushing the documentary and its allegations. Those episodes were then touted by Elon Musk and the tech-bro social media ecosystem until it eventually wound up on the Facebook page of every racist uncle in America. The documentary has inspired some inflammatory rhetoric. Where there was once agreement among most conservatives that Derek Chauvin was a rogue cop whose murder of George Floyd was witnessed by a good chunk of humanity, for much of the right, Chauvin is now a political prisoner who has been framed by craven state and federal officials who caved to the social justice mobs. A poll taken after the verdict found that nearly half of Republicans thought Chauvin should have been acquitted/ By the end of last year, the documentary had been amplified by more mainstream conservatives. Former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly touted her interview with Chaix and Collins by claiming to have “new” body camera footage that would “change the narrative.” The footage had been publicly available for more than two years. The documentary has since been promoted by the New York Post, on the podcast hosted by John McWhorter and Glenn Loury, and by “heterodox” voices like Brett Weinstein. The latest outlet to run with these claims is the Free Press, founded by former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, in a piece by Coleman Hughes. The Free Press feels like new territory for these conspiracies. A number of people have sent me Hughes’s column, including longtime readers of my own work who tell me they find it persuasive. Hughes, though a fellow at the far-right and reliably pro-police Manhattan Institute, isn’t viewed as a demagogue like Carlson. He’s been described as “a thinker to be reckoned with” and “one of the most prolific and insightful commentators on race and class in the United States.” The Free Press itself claims to be “built on the ideals that once were the bedrock of great journalism: honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence.” As far as I know, the Free Press is the first major publication that doesn’t self-identify as conservative to cover the documentary reverently, and to amplify its claims — though its critics would say that despite its claim to “fierce independence,” the Free Press is, in fact, pretty conservative. Hughes’s piece, then is, a useful lens through which to analyze which TFOM allegations seem to be resonating with a broader audience, and for that reason, I think it’s worth a detailed response. The documentary makes a lot of outlandish claims, but I want to focus mostly on the two that I’ve seen most often. These are also the two claims that Hughes spends most of his piece promoting. The first claim is that when Chauvin put his knee on Floyd’s back and neck for nine minutes, it could not have been criminal assault because the Minneapolis Police Department has trained its officers -- including Chauvin -- to use that very technique. The second claim is that Floyd’s official autopsy found that he died of a heart attack brought on by cardiovascular disease and drug use. Therefore, Chauvin could not have been responsible for Floyd’s death. Both of these claims are false. The first claim is not only incorrect, the documentary engages in deceptive editing and convenient omissions to push it. In other words, the documentary is lying. The second claim is also incorrect, but the explanation is a bit more complicated. I’m going to address the first claim in this post. I’ll look at the second claim in my next post. I’ll also put up a third and final post addressing some of Hughes’s other points, and what I think this massive effort to retcon Floyd’s death is really all about."
https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-retconning-of-george-floyd
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801
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