**UPDATE: Like the New York Times, Bloomberg Politics published all of Darren Wilson’s address information (specific street, city, state) except for his exact house number.
The rage and frustration boiling behind the decision to publish the address information of a man facing too may death threats to count is beyond my comprehension. And yet by way of Bloomberg Politics that is exactly what Dave Weigel did. For obvious reasons, I won’t link the story and have X’d out the address info:
On August 15, after the killing of Ferguson, Missouri teen Michael Brown had surged into the national consciousness, the Washington Post’s DeNeen L. Brown filed a story from a town up the road. There were “dark blue undercover police cars parked outside the house of Darren Wilson.” That house was located on “XXXXXXXXXX.” On August 16, the same details appeared in a story co-bylined by Brown, Jerry Markon, and Wesley Lowery. “Dark blue undercover police cars were parked outside his house on XXXXXXXX,” they wrote. Both stories made it clear that Wilson, the officer who killed Brown, had taken himself elsewhere.
On November 24, after a grand jury opted not to indict Wilson, the New York Times ran a story by Julie Bosman and Campbell Robertson about how the police officer had “quietly” gotten married while avoiding the press. Wilson and his wife owned a home “XXXXXXXXX.”
Bloomberg Politics defends the media’s publishing of Wilson’s home address information with this nonsense:
The irony, lost or ignored, is that Wilson’s street was not published as an incitement to anything. It was a detail known to media on the ground. Wilson wasn’t even in the house. That was the point.
Here’s what Bloomberg Politics doesn’t tell you:
Days after he fatally shot an unarmed black teen in August, Officer Darren Wilson was cutting grass when he was told his home address was circulating online.
Within three hours, he’d grabbed some bags and gone into hiding, according to his attorneys.
“He had to leave the grass, literally, half mowed,” his lawyer, Neil Bruntrager, told CNN’s Don Lemon late Wednesday.
Whether Wilson is or isn’t living in the home doesn’t matter. His entire life has been targeted and Bloomberg Politics is smart enough to know that Wilson’s empty home would amount to quite a trophy for a looter, vandal or arsonist.
They are also smart enough to know that the more times Wilson’s address information is published, the more vulnerable that house is.
After completely blowing the Trayvon Martin case and now this one, the media is obviously furious and lashing out in the standard and expected passive-aggressive ways.
Instead of throwing bricks through windows and lighting police cars on fire, Bloomberg Politics is instead joining the New York Times and Washington Post in providing targeting intelligence, and in the process making life as miserable as possible for a police officer guilty of nothing more than not fitting the media’s narrative.
When the media wants you destroyed, facts only enrage them more.
John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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