Mumia At The Crossroads in the Age of Obama April 03, 2010
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL is an African-American writer and journalist who has spent the last 24 years on Pennsylvania’s death row. His demand for justice and a new trial is supported by heads of state from France to South Africa, by Nobel Laureates, the European Parliament, city governments from Detroit to San Francisco to Paris, France, scholars, religious leaders, artists, scientists, the Congressional Black Caucus and other members of U.S. Congress, and by countless thousands who cherish democratic and human rights the world over.
 
Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Jamal’s journalistic skills, historical analysis and eloquent pen have only confirmed his reputation as “voice of the voiceless.” With judicious historical insight and pointed probing of the issues, he continues to question and enlighten his readers through scores of columns, illuminating such issues as U.S. empire, terrorism, poverty, the U.S. support of Pakistan during the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq, and so much more. (See the “Mumia Index” on this site.) His columns and essays continue to find place in scholarly books as well as in the street newspapers of the homeless.
 
Working people have expressed their support for Jamal through their leading regional, national and international trade union bodies. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union closed down West coast ports for the day of April 24, 1999, to support Mumia’s bid for a new trial.
 
Jamal’s books and over 500 published columns have been adopted as resource material for the teaching and inspiration of a growing number of students, youth, and educators who have come to see their futures as intimately tied to the outcome of this case. The 1982 trial that convicted Jamal of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner has been challenged by leading legal analysts and scholars, from Stuart Taylor writing in the prestigious American Lawyer magazine, to Per Walsoe of the Supreme Court of Denmark, to Amnesty International which issued a special report in February 2000, claiming that “justice would best be served by the granting of a new trial…” to Jamal.
 
While Jamal has worked while confined as an advocate for so many others, he has maintained his own innocence from the beginning, and does so in ever clearer and more emphatic tones to the present day. His attorneys have presented compelling evidence that key witnesses were intimidated or coerced to provide false testimony, that a purported “confession” by Mumia was likely fabricated by police, and that vital evidence pointing to his innocence was withheld from the defense. A key eyewitness has now recanted critical court testimony she gave under police intimidation and which was used against Jamal.
 
The confused and flagrantly-biased character of the prosecutors’ case against Mumia has only mushroomed over the years: yet another affidavit has been offered that casts doubt on the original witnesses’ claims that Mumia had confessed to the murder; another man now has even stepped forward to claim that he is the one who killed the officer Mumia was convicted of killing; and a court stenographer swears in another affidavit that she heard Mumia’s original judge, Albert Sabo, say during a court recess, “Yeah, and I’m gonna help ’em fry the nigger.” (Up to the time of his death just a few years ago, Judge Sabo maintained he had been racially unbiased throughout Mumia’s trial.)
 
Jamal was forced to appeal his conviction before this same judge who had sentenced him to death in 1982. Judge Sabo was notorious for presiding over capital cases resulting in 33 people being sentenced to death (all but two, people of color), more than twice the number of any sitting judge in the United States.
 
So confused and biased is the case against Mumia that a U.S. District Judge finally had to acknowledge just one of the problems of Mumia’s conviction, and in 1999 he thus vacated the death sentence against Mumia. The prosecution, however, with the help of police unions like the Fraternal Order of Police, are still working tirelessly and vigorously to see that he is executed. Mumia remains on death row while the prosecution appeals the suspension of a death sentence. Meanwhile, Mumia’s attorneys press on to gain an overturning of the judgment of guilt against Mumia toward the end of achieving his freedom. His life still hangs in the balance, with death just a few callous and cruel decisions away.
 
WE EDUCATORS ARE UNITED IN SAYING NO TO JAMAL’S EXECUTION. We invite you to study this web site, explore the case and the issues – for Mumia’s sake and that of so many others on U.S. death row.
 
■ Jamal has long been a POLITICAL TARGET as a prominent journalist critic of police brutality and racism in Philadelphia since the days of Mayor Frank Rizzo.
 
■ Jamal is made more vulnerable by sweeping JUDGMENTS AGAINST DISSENTERS as “terrorists,” and he has become less protected today, as many progressive activists in post-9/11 USA turn more of their attention and energy toward the war in Iraq, tensions in the Middle East and general surveillance issues in the U.S.
 
■ Jamal’s life is increasingly put at risk because even in post-9/11 USA he remains a vigorous critic of POLICE REPRESSION AND LAW ENFORCEMENT USE OF EXCESSIVE FORCE. Whether writing about the outrage of torture at the Guantánamo Base detention center, or in the jails and lockups of Brooklyn, New York, and Austin, Texas, Mumia’s as “voice for the voiceless” puts him at ever greater risk.
 
■ Jamal has challenged the present political priorities of SPENDING MORE FOR WAR AND PRISONS THAN FOR EDUCATION. The youth who increasingly rally to Mumia’s cause in the name of justice and fair play know that we build jailhouse cell blocks more rapidly than schoolhouse classrooms.
 
AS EDUCATORS, IN PENNSYLVANIA, ACROSS THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD, WE STRONGLY OPPOSE THE EXECUTION OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL. While there are those who believe Mumia is innocent and should be FREED NOW, and others who have no opinion about his innocence, we are all united in viewing Mumia’s 1982 trial as a travesty of justice, and affirm that he MUST have a NEW TRIAL!

Last Update: Jun 15, 2009
"The Philadelphia Inquirer - Its Sheer Editorial Bias" by Ed Herman

by Edward S. Herman*

 

The French naming of  a street in  Paris suburb for Mumia Abu-Jamal activated two Inky biases,  and resulted in a front page article on the incident (Jennifer Lin, “Paris suburb names street for Abu-Jamal,” May 16), and an editorial on the subject (“Another bad idea from France,” May 17). For the Inky, honoring a “cop-killer” is beyond the pale. Actually, it is not Abu-Jamal’s position as a convicted police-killer that has led to his having a street named after him, but his role as a prison journalist who has for over two decades in high security death-row detention, continued to expose the horrors and abuses of America’s obsession with state-sponsored killing. The Inky mentions none of this.

 

 The Inky has long been extremely hostile to  Mumia Abu-Jamal, and its bias in handling his case has been a classic illustration of  news perversion in support of  a bias. While this naming of a street for Abu-Jamal gets front page attention, the Inky couldn’t be bothered reporting  even on the back pages a December 2005 circuit court decision opening up the possibility of a new trial based on judicial errors in his original trial. Earlier, an international conference on his case back in 2000 attended by 700 people right here in Philadelphia was unreported on the ground that it was only a “public relations” stunt; whereas an ad on the case in the New York Times by the Fraternal Order of Police was not PR but was newsworthy. Equally blatant,  a report in 2000 by Amnesty International on the Abu-Jamal case that found his trial to be “deeply flawed” was given a few back page lines under “World Events.” (For an earlier account of this systematic bias, see Edward S. Herman, "Hometown Hostility: The Philadelphia Inquirer vs. Mumia Abu Jamal," Extra!, September/October, 2000; and see Dave Lindorff’s Killing Time [Common Courage Press: 2003], chapter 11). 

 

The Inky is a “law and order” paper, in the sense that it leans over backwards to treat the police and their work—and their loves and hates—kindly. Abu Jamal is hated by the police, and the Inky’s treatment follows accordingly, helped along by a touch of racist bias, just as the recent killing of a police officer caused the Inky to go berserk with intensive coverage of this super-worthy victim. (On bigger law and order issues, such as the Bush administration’s violations of  the UN Charter and the U.S. Constitution, the Inky is much more tolerant and shows no indignation comparable to that which it displays in discussing Abu-Jamal).

 

The Inky’s editorial asserts that Abu-Jamal shot a police officer “in cold blood” back in 1981. It then goes on to say that he may “ well deserve a new trial” but the odds are “a thousand to one” that he did it. So while it wasn’t a fair trial , “the police work was far from CSI quality” and “the trial judge was abysmal,” the editors KNOW that Abu-Jamal is a “cop killer.”  This is sheer editorial bias, as the serious (admitted) imperfections of  the police evidence and the “abysmal” performance of the trial judge, plus the incompetence of  some of the defense work, makes the truth an open question yet to be properly adjudicated, as Dave Lindorff makes clear in his extensive review of the evidence in his Killing Time. There is also the possibility that if Abu-Jamal did shoot the police officer it was done in self defense, a possibility that the Inky editors could never entertain.

 

The Inky’s anti-French bias is also blatant and crude and displays once again the editors’ conventional and chauvinistic biases. France dragged its feet in the rush to aggression against , and got a very bad chauvinist-press response in this country, where the media couldn’t abide a failure to accept Bush lies and acceptance of  a major violation of  the UN Charter and “supreme international crime.” The Inky joined this throng, and continues to find France wrong-headed. It condemned them for not turning over Ira Einhorn with sufficient celerity, with the French insisting on procedures that conformed with its and EU’s law—but as in the case of the invasion of Iraq the “law and order” Inky editors couldn’t tolerate this adherence to law that interfered with the rapid return of the bad man. On such matters the end justifies any means. More recently, as described in recent Inky Notes,  the Inky has been very sardonic about the French upheavals against a new labor law that sought more “flexible” labor markets, driving toward that wondrous neoliberal world of lower wages and growing worker insecurity. This is consistent with the longstanding Inky class bias that led the editors to support with passion NAFTA and the WTO and to watch complacently as income inequality grew. Even the threat to themselves in the steady downsizing and imminent sale of the Inky to a possibly more market-oriented ownership hasn’t chastened them as yet. Too bad.

 

The Inky diverts to this “bad idea from ,” while a host of  serious issues remain neglected. But these are “controversial” and might upset their rightwing readers, and while immensely relevant to the public interest must be sacrificed in favor of cheap shots like the “bad idea” and plain silence. How about an editorial on the Bush dependence on “fear” and the threat of  using such a tactic that folks like Adolf Hitler found so serviceable? (See Bob Herbert, “ the Fearful,” NY Times Op-Ed:

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/opinion/15herbert.html?th&emc=th).. How about an editorial on the dangerous intolerance of Bush and his team and their propensity—and that of their supporters—to quell dissent and openly attack dissenters, as in the Joseph Wilson case? ( See Robert Parry, “ Dixie Chicks, Valerie Plame & Bush”

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051606Z.shtml).  How about an editorial on the recent Bush tax cut that puts still more money into the hands of the ultra-rich, even in the face of  very severe financial problems for the lower 60 percent of  income receivers? (See Robert B. Reich, “The $70 Billion Tax Cut: Irresponsible and Obscene”: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051606M.shtml). How about an editorial on the business takeover of the political system? (See BuzzFlash interviews David Sirota, on the "Hostile Takeover" of American democracy: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=20772).  How about an editorial on the kind of material reported by Charlie Savage in "Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws" (Boston Globe, April 30)?. How about an editorial on the costs of the war, now estimated to be running into the trillions? (Linda Bilmes on the 2 trillion war: http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/050682.html). How about an editorial on the growth of  theocratic influence in the Republic Party and the threat that this poses? (Kevin Phillips on “God’s Own Party, in the Seattle Times, (http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0514-26.htm). How about an editorial on the recent controversy on the power of the pro-Israel lobby? (See Robert Fisk, on “Breaking the Last Taboo,” http://www.counterpunch.com/fisk04272006.html).

 

This is just for starters. But it assumes a desire to enlighten on the public issues, an objective that is at best not highly ranked by the Inky editors.

________

* Edward S. Herman, a Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, also taught a course on Media Bias in the Penn Annenberg School. He has written extensively on the media, political economy, and foreign policy, including the books Corporate Control, Corporate Power (1981), Triumph of the Market (1995) , The Myth of the Liberal Media: An Edward Herman Reader (1999), and Manufacturing Consent (1988 and 2002, with Noam Chomsky). He has a monthly Fog Watch column in Z Magazine.