News Flash: WRAL Sucks.

 

Having been a drive-by myself,  I so want to give some of these drive-bys a break.  But so many of them keep disappointing me with the blatant dictation, lying, and outright propagandizing.

A whole lot of laziness ties into those drive-by misdeeds.  Running around collecting facts is HARD work. It’s so much easier to have someone you, um, “trust” to do all that hard work FOR YOU.

*If you can’t trust the folks you meet at the abortion clinic, or at the Quilting Bee For Handgun Seizure AND Nuclear Disarmament,  who can you trust?*

The pretense of being OUR eyes and ears has long been a joke.  I can’t believe any of them still use that.

Laura Leslie got caught trashing conservatives on social media, and is STILL employed by WRAL to cover state politics. Most of them over there can’t pronounce ‘Integrity.’

A documentary produced by WRAL is being advertised all over Amazon Prime.  It’s about the 1993 murder of Michael Jordan’s dad near Lumberton.  The documentary is called ‘Moment of Truth.’  That title is quite ironic and misleading because there is not one damn ounce of truth in the entire show.

I was a drive-by at the time of the murder, and was pretty much OWNING the story.  (I interviewed both suspects substantially, and got myself subpoenaed.)

That story helped me gain some national work at ABC News and US News & World Report, as well as some international work with wire services like Reuters, UPI and AFP.

 

Fast forward to about fifteen years, or so, ago.  WRAL reporter Amanda Lamb contacted me to see if I could help her with a documentary project on the Jordan case.  I told her my view on the case — that the two guys convicted were guilty as hell — and offered to be interviewed on camera.

Apparently, I didn’t provide the angle she wanted.  She disappeared at that point.  Now, I see this WRAL-produced documentary being advertised.  I decided to watch.

A lot of file footage was used.  (I didn’t realize how often the TV news guys caught me on camera.)

Lamb, instead of talking to people who knew the story, decided to base her whole story on (1) spin from a slip-and-fall ambulance chaser trying to overturn one of the suspects’ conviction, and (2) the word of every conspiracy theorist loon in Robeson County.

Much of Lamb’s story focused on rumors of corruption by then-sheriff Hubert Stone.  (Stone has been dead for a number of years, so he can’t defend himself.)

Lefties hated Stone.  He was an old-school Southern Democrat who came off like a real-life version of Sheriff Buford Pusser in the movie ‘Walking Tall.’  Stone was the sheriff of one of the most crime-ridden counties in the state, but never carried a gun.  His phone number and address were listed in the phone book. 

Stone could easily transition between lovable old grand-dad to ‘Dirty Harry’ Callahan or Sheriff Pusser. He didn’t play around.  He didn’t tolerate nonsense. Stone commanded respect from some very tough, very scary characters.

Lamb talked to everyone she could find that had a grudge against Stone.  And there were many.  One of her on-camera subjects was the retired newspaper editor.  Stone had arrested his mother for embezzlement.  The editor never forgave him. (Lamb didn’t mention that part on-air.)

Lamb presented the story as though the investigation of the murder was one big corrupt racist scam directed by Stone.  Never mind that Stone and his department were brought onto the case as a courtesy by the FBI and the SBI — who had been investigating for weeks prior to the arrest of the suspects.  If there was a scam, it would have been more “honest” to try and link it to state and federal authorities, instead of Stone and his deputies.

I knew the case better than most people. Yet, Lamb chose not include me.  What I had to say didn’t “fit” with the bullshit being peddled by the defense attorney and all the leftist kooks she gave camera time to.

You would think WRAL would learn from the slow-death of the McClatchy papers and the declining TV ratings numbers.  I guess they prefer to continue lying and sucking.