CNN Changes Its Black Transgender Story to Target Police

On June 15, 2020, CNN published an article “Thousands show up for black trans people in nationwide protests” which picked up a theme of the Black Lives Matter movement protesting police brutality. It referenced a “Black Trans Lives Matter rally in New York,” which “took place amid global demonstrations in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has surged in the wake of George Floyd’s death.” It also wrote about a protest in Los Angeles regarding the killing of “Tony McDade, a black transgender man who was shot by a Tallahassee police officer last week” and one in Chicago which held a “Drag March for Change this weekend. They demanded justice for victims of police brutality.”

CNN crafted its 2020 story to fit the backdrop of BLM and effectively paint the police as not only racist, but as people who discriminate against the transgender community as well.

Picture from CNN website with sub-header “Thousands rallied outside Brooklyn Museum in New York to support trans rights on Sunday, June 14, 2020.”

This was in sharp contrast to the story CNN published about transgender deaths on November 18, 2019.

That story never mentioned the police. It wrote that “Half of transgender and gender non-conforming people killed since 2013 have been killed by an acquaintance, friend, family member or intimate partner, according to the Human Rights Campaign.” This is a critical fact that was completely omitted from the 2020 story which sought to frame the police for the murder of Black transgender people.

What was also left out of the story is that most transgender people are attacked by Blacks according to statistics by the FBI.

Chart 1: FBI Hate Crimes Against Transgender People, by Race

				5.71x
	White	Black	W/B Ratio	Black Likelihood
2013	8	18	0.44	12.85
2014	37	36	1.03	5.55
2015	34	38	0.89	6.38
2016	30	57	0.53	10.85
2017	41	43	0.95	5.99
2018	57	76	0.75	7.61

Since the FBI began tracking information about hate crimes against transgender people in 2013, Black people have been greater offenders in every year except for one, 2014. In considering that there are 5.7 times as many Whites as Blacks in the United States, the Black community is much more disproportionately likely to attack a transgender person, by as much as 5 to 12 times.

That statistic is left out by CNN, even when it breaks down statistics by likelihood (events per X people) comparing the United States to other countries and the use of police force against both Blacks and Whites.

CNN rewrote the latest story of attacks on Black transgender people to feed the anti-police narrative of the moment, even though most of those attacks are from the Black community, including from friends and family members, not the police. It is a form of incitement and junkyard journalism that gives protesters fuel and a false sense of moral superiority. #MainstreamMediaIsFullofCrap