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Whether Don Lemon broke federal law in his role in an attack on a Minnesota church will be up to a jury, but we can already say he deserves the max for his crime against journalism.
At issue, both in the criminal case and the one in the court of journalistic ethics: Was the former CNN anchor present at the disruption of the church service in St. Paul to documenting the event, or was he participating in it? It was quite clearly the latter.
In the moments prior to the harebrained “protest” in the house of worship that left children in tears, Lemon can be seen outside, on video he took himself, telling his viewer that the “operation is a secret,” adding, “I can’t tell you what’s going to happen but you’re going to watch it live.”
Lemon clearly knows exactly what is going to happen next, because he explains why the crowd of agitators is so White and looks “MAGA coded,” saying, “there is a reason they have so many white people here, I’m going to be honest, for the operation they are doing today, it is important to have allies, White allies here.”
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The only plausible meaning to Lemon’s bizarre leftist gobbledegook above, is that the “White allies” among the agitators were there to infiltrate the church service without arousing suspicion until everyone was in place.
At that moment, Lemon was making a fateful choice that should formally his career in journalism. Instead of choosing to tell his viewer the truth, which he knew, he chose to abet the invasion of a church by agitators.
Lemon could have broken the story, but instead he helped to build it.
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Once the alleged criminal disruption of the church service begins, leaving parishioners shocked and shaken amid piercing screams, Lemon tries to suddenly pretend he’s just a journalist who stumbled on a story. It’s a ridiculous lie.
It is, in fact, very similar to the lie that agitators who physically interfere with ICE operations are just “legal observers,” not participants in the chaos.
During his livestream, prior to the disruption of the service, Lemon kept operational security for the group he was supposedly just “covering,” which crosses the brightest line in journalistic ethics.
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By allowing himself to be on the agitators’ “team,” as one of them blatantly says on video, Lemon made himself ineligible to cover them, and the biased results inside the church show exactly why.
Every churchgoer Lemon interviewed, including the pastor trying to tend to his flock in an emergency were given the third degree about the supposedly evil actions of ICE, while Lemon’s resistance compatriots were not challenged on their disruption.
Lemon has quite clearly convinced himself that President Donald Trump, ICE, and all of MAGA are an evil, fascist threat and that his first responsibility is to fight that evil. You might say, “At least he is fairly honest about it.” But it’s not ethical journalism.
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It is possible to do “activist journalism,” within an ethical framework. One could argue that James O’Keefe and some other gonzo shock video jocks on the right do so. But what is vital is that they admit they are activists, and they don’t participate in criminal activity.
Lemon, and far too many others in journalism on the left have decided that they can somehow be part of the resistance to Trump while also covering it, warts and all, in a fair manner. This has just proven not to be the case.
It has long been argued that the only way to save the journalism industry, which is fundamentally distrusted by 70% of Americans, is for there to be real consequences for ethical violations.
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The First Amendment prohibits the government from meting out consequences for unethical journalism, only the industry itself can impose them, and that is why Lemon should never be hired by another news organization.
These kinds of harsh penalties are the only way that ethics in journalism can be enforced, and my goodness, are we in desperate need of some serious enforcement.
There will be reasonable and rigorous debate about the legality of Lemon’s actions in Minnesota, as there should be. But there should be no debate regarding his crime against journalism, proven by his own livestream.
It is time for examples to be made, or journalism could lose the trust of the people forever.
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