Coverage of New Video in Waco Biker Shooting Reveals Media Bias

new biker video
Photo: CNN VIdeo Screenshot
Lee Stranahan

New video released of the May shooting that occurred outside a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas, raises more questions than it answers about what really happened that day. One of the biggest takeaways from the incident may be the nationwide media blackout on what could be the biggest story of police misconduct in 2015.

The May shooting left nine dead, four of whom had no criminal records in Texas. Over 170 bikers were immediately arrested on cookie-cutter charges and given $1,000,000 bail each.

The story immediately made national headlines as a “biker shootout” and Black Lives Matter activists were quick to jump on the story as an example of how violent white people are treated better by the police than black Americans.

Even CNN featured a story on the ‘double standard on race” in coverage of the Waco shootings vs. the Baltimore rioting.

In a now deleted tweet, Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King asked:

Did the police use pepper spray or tear gas on the bikers Waco today? Did they injure anyone during any arrests?

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) May 17, 2015

As it turns out, ballistics reports revealed that four of the nine people killed at the shooting were hit by bullets that are the same caliber as used by Texas law enforcement sharpshooters.

One major question that remains unanswered: why were dozens of police laying in wait outside the Twin Peaks restaurant that day? As Breitbart Texas reported this summer, the event that the bikers had gathered for was a regularly scheduled meeting of a biker political group Texas Confederation of Clubs and Independents that had never experienced violence in over a decade of meetings, so the very presence of heavily armed police should raise questions.

However, the police have still not admitting to shooting any of the bikers and the media, including CNN, has continued to characterize the Twin Peals shootings as a “gunfight at the OK Corral.”

A CNN report on the release of the new video makes no mention at of the controversy over initial police statements or even that anyone other than the police did the shooting. Instead, it continues the narrative that the what happened in Waco in May was simply a biker shooting.

Leave it to the foreign press to mention the facts that CNN left out.

An article in the UK Daily Mail points out that video does show one biker shooting another in the back of the head, but the Mail piece includes other details as well that CNN is simply ignoring:

The latest trove of potential grand jury evidence depicts a chaotic, bloody scene in which police swarmed into the shootout between rival biker gangs outside the Twin Peaks restaurant and arrested nearly 200 people.

Hours of audio and footage and hundreds of documents including ballistics reports show that four of the dead and at least one of the wounded were struck with bullets from .223-caliber rifles — the only type of weapon fired by police that day.

Two of the four dead had wounds from only that kind of rifle; the other two were shot by other kinds of guns as well.

The ballistics reports show that the rest of the people killed were shot by a variety of other guns.

It was not clear whether any bikers had similar guns to the police that day. Among the hundreds of weapons authorities recovered from the scene were 12 long guns, which could include rifles.

The Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences, which conducted the ballistics analysis, declined to comment on its findings.

Waco Police Chief Brent Stroman had said in June that officers shot a total of 12 rounds using the semi-automatic setting on their .223-caliber rifles.

Evidence showed some of those shots struck bikers, but didn’t indicate whether they were fatal.

Police and the district attorney’s office declined to comment on the latest evidence, but have previously defended the officers’ use of force, claiming that bikers had also opened fire on police.

While cities like Chicago have seen relentless protests and media coverage over allegations of the police cover-up in the shooting of black teenager Laquan McDonald, the story that the police may have killed four of the bikers that they claimed were in a gunfight has gotten almost no media attention. Nor has the mass arrests of nearly two hundred people who have a questionable connection to the shooting gotten any real media interest. Further, the authorities in Waco haven’t even attempted to hide the fact that they don’t want information about the story to come out. A judge in the case issued a gag order that forbids the attorneys who were trying to get the story out from discussing the case publicly.

This has led to a civil rights lawsuit being filed on behalf of some of the arrested bikers.As attorney Clint Broden’s suit says:

In the aftermath of the incident at Twin Peaks, Defendants Stroman, Reyna and Chavez apparently concluded that the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution ceased to apply, and could be ignored given what they perceived as an immediate need to announce the re-establishment of law and order in their town.

Broden tells Breitbart Texas that the civil rights cases against authorities have been filed, but the that defendants have not been served.

Additionally, the Waco incident has led to ongoing profiling, as Breitbart Texas reporter Lana Shadwick wrote in November:

Christian bikers in ministry, like Bikers for Christ, say they are frequently detained and questioned by cops who want to see if they have information about bikers obtained while engaging in their ministry. The Twin Peaks biker indictments and arrests in Waco, Texas, brought attention to the profiling, as well as the harassment of motorcycle riders in America.

Despite the massive number of arrests, the rubber stamp charges,  high bails, foot dragging by authorities to release information, eventual ballistics details, the gag order, and the profiling, the mainstream media has simply swept the Waco biker story under the rug. In the meantime, complaints about police brutality by leftist activist group Black Lives Matter and uprising at college campuses by affiliated black leftist student groups have gotten wall-to-wall exposure.

Comparing the coverage of the Waco shooting and Black Lives Matter is a clear example of media bias through story selection and selective reporting. The Black Lives Matter movement is the latest incarnation of activist leftist groups like Occupy Wall Street, whereas the dead, wounded and arrested bikers are nearly all white males from Texas, many of whom are Christian.

There is racial bias in America. It’s just not what the left says it is.

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