Legacy media notices Portland is burning after a year of reporting on 'mostly peaceful' riots

Last year, the mainstream media turned a collective blind eye to the violence Antifa perpetrated against local communities left devastated in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter riots. One riotous year later, after gaslighting the American public into believing that riots were "mostly peaceful," the disconnected press is now noticing the correlation between rampant crime and the far-left.

A year ago, outlets like the Washington Post were telling a very different story.

"Help Me Find Trump's 'Anarchists' in Portland," asked the New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof in late July. "I've been on the front lines of the protests here, searching for the 'radical-left anarchists' who President Trump says are on Portland streets each evening," Kristof introduced the piece.

"Good morning from wonderful Portland, where the city is not under siege and buildings are not burning to the ground," tweeted CNN correspondent Josh Campbell who covers "national security, law enforcement, and racial justice."

"I also ate my breakfast burrito outside today and so far haven't been attacked by shadowy gangs of Antifa commandos," Campbell wrote in the since-deleted tweet.

Just the night before, Antifa rioters set ablaze the apartment complex where Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler resided at the time, among other buildings torched.

The weekend before, Trump supporter Aaron "Jay" Danielson was murdered by self-identified Antifa member Michael Forest Reinoehl in downtown Portland.

Campbell's daytime utopian picture of Portland in September gaslighted an entire nation with the CNN reporter's whimsical spin on Antifa terrorism which often breaks out at night. Others also downplayed anarchistic violence across America.

CNN commentator Chris Cillizza claimed in August that former President Donald Trump labeled the civil unrest in American cities as "riots" out of "desperation." The image that Cillizza tweeted shows flames consuming half of the screen. Cillizza's likes were overwhelmed by comments containing sharp criticism.

Journalistic elites and legacy outlets refused to see reality and instead mocked those who were concerned about recent trends. A handful of smug reporters joined Campbell, lounging in parks and posting pictures of how safe it appeared.

"I went for a belated NYC run this morning and am sorry to report that I saw very few black-clad anarchists," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote in September. The multi-part Twitter thread sneered: "Also, the city is not yet in flames."

The troubles the masses spoke of were contained in certain crime-ridden areas. Krugman wasn't threatened in the neighborhood that the Nobel laureate called home. The jolly experiences of the upper social class proved nothing but ignorance.

"Had to shoot my way through a whole bunch of Antifa roadblocks but it was worth it to get this fruity drink," Gary Shteyngart, a New York Times bestselling author with over 500,000 Twitter followers, tweeted in September from his perch on the Lower East Side.

"Washington, D.C., is simply out of control," tweeted Washington Post journalist Dan Zak. The since-deleted tweet in August ignored the leftist mobs harassing patrons dining at outdoor restaurants that same month. Unsuspecting customers were berated into joining the social justice protests and forced to raise fists in solidarity against "white supremacy" in the nation's capital.

The fad among some high-profile personalities was nauseating as the verified blue checkmarks showcased daylight photographs of well-to-do scenes undamaged.

Meanwhile, arson, looting, vandalism, and gunfire engulfed blocks at nightfall.

The Washington Post published an article Monday titled, "Anarchists and an increase in violent crime hijack Portland's social justice movement." The piece attracted back patting from the left-wing publication's colleagues and allies.

Liberal pundit Jonathan Chait, a writer for New York magazine praised the Washington Post senior national correspondent Scott Wilson's "very upsetting" report about how de-policing Portland has harmed minority communities.

In mid-May, the city of Portland reached 30 homicide victims this year, which is five times the number recorded during the same period in 2020, "a frightening pace that could see more slayings here by the end of the year than in the past four decades," Wilson cited in the Washington Post article.

Since the 100-plus days of consecutive riots, Portland had witnessed an under-policed state and "a return to an old-school style of gun violence" reminiscent of the "tit-for-tat cycle" of fatal reprisals, "almost always among young men of color," Wilson noted. The Portland Police Bureau counted 348 shootings through April, which more than double those recorded over the first four months of last year.

Most residents have even called for more police, not less. The Portland Police Bureau is authorized to have 1,001 sworn officers. A recent May poll conducted by The Oregonian found that three-quarters of Portland-area residents did not want police officer levels to decline more than the figures have. Just more than half said residents favored an increase in the number of police officers.

At the moment, the bureau has about 900 officers, a shortage that city officials blame on the lack of prioritized hiring and that police leaders attribute to insufficient support as well as funding, Wilson wrote. Portland Police Bureau chief Charles "Chuck" Lovell told the Washington Post that more than 120 sworn officers have left the department in the past nine months.

The City Council last year cut about $27 million from the $200 million police budget—about $11 million because of the pandemic-inflicted budget crisis and $15 million as part of the "Defund the Police" effort, Wilson cited.

A police bureau unit was disbanded last July that focused on gun violence, a high-profile initiative that had been designed to help the agency anticipate rising gang- and gun-related crime as the protests began fading. Lovell, who is black, said the phenomenon "bears the brunt on the African American community" as the shootings "have an outsized impact on people of color."

The rising gun violence and the downtown demonstrations had placed stress on the police department's resources. Police response time to emergency calls has more than doubled over the past eight years with more than 40 minutes of wait-time before calls are even fielded by emergency dispatchers, Wilson reported.

Back in January, an Antifa mob tried to stop police from responding to an armed man threatening to harm others and himself in downtown Portland.

Portland Police sent in its Enhanced Crisis Intervention Team but was interrupted by hostile Antifa protesters who were gathered nearby at Powell's Books calling for The Post Millennial's editor-at-large Andy Ngo's book to be banned.

The suicidal man's mother arrived on scene and pleaded with the mob to disperse but the crowd ignored the woman's cries. The escalating incident forced police to call for all available riot-control officers from the North and East Precincts, causing major backlog in police responses to attend to other emergency calls.

Chait tweeted the glowing sentiment gushing over Wilson's piece with utter shock at the revelation that police exist to police crime. However, the prominent writer was almost eclipsed by the rising ratio of comments and quote tweets.

One user pointed out that defunded police leading to out-of-control crime is "a feature" of Antifa's plan, "not a bug." The account then uploaded an image of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook by Antifa ideologue Mark Bray.

"Is the article supposed to be surprising? Some have been highlighting these concerns for months," tweeted Checks and Balances co-founder Jonathan Adler who rallies conservative and libertarian lawyers standing up for the rule of law.

"Shocking," remarked City Journal editor Charles Fain Lehman who had pinpointed the problem in February: the rise in crime may be due to the "climate of lawlessness" that has "reigned" major Democrat-run cities since the start of the vehement anti-police protests. "It should also come as no surprise that the Bay Area, which has been at the forefront of progressive criminal-justice reforms for years, is bearing the brunt of these attacks," Lehman quipped, faulting "soft-on-crime leaders" in Northern California who have broken the criminal justice system.

Some of the conservative observers compared the media's changing tone on Antifa to the about-face over the Wuhan lab leak theory, which several outlets admitted is now credible but was dismissed at first because Trump pitched its probability.

Until now, the political left has framed the possibility that COVID-19 was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology as racist, fringe, and senseless conspiracy.

However, in recent weeks, the speculation has garnered substantial credence.