Newspaper Editor assassinated..In California
Chauncey Bailey was the editor of Oakland CA’s Oakland Post. He was shot to death while he walked to work in the morning sunlight. The masked gunman walked up to him and calmly put 3 bullets into Mr. Bailey then boarded a van that pulled up to collect him. Mr. Bailey was dead before the ambulance arrived.
I read about this news item in a European newspaper, The Guardian. I don’t know what bothers me more..that a newspaper editor was assassinated in broad daylight in America or that the story is getting little attention in the MSM.
The group that is widely held as responsible for this murder/assassination is Muslim, precisely a black Muslim sect that Mr. Bailey, also African-American ,was investigating for financial irregularities. The sect, as noted by the Guardian, was: “founded by Yusef Bey, a black Muslim leader in Oakland whose followers preached a strict message of Islam and black political power. Bey’s followers have long been the subject of intense police and media scrutiny for their alleged use of strong-arm tactics in promoting their business interests and also shutting down stores that sold alcohol. Bey was also stridently anti-homosexual and awaited trial on 27 counts of sex crimes when he died of cancer in 2003.”
Mr. Bailey had written numerous stories about this specific group. This murder happened last Thursday and only now is getting attention outside the region where it happened. I of course googled Mr. Bailey’s name after reading the Guardian writeup. The San Jose Mercury News has been writing about it non-stop since it happened as has the SF Chron, but the large MSM publications like the LAT and the NYT are only giving it a one story writeup, and they don’t call this an assassination. Merriam-Webster defines as assassination thusly: to murder (a usually prominent person) by sudden or secret attack often for political reasons.
This isn’t a third world country where killing a newspaper editor is commonplace. This also isn’t something we have seen happen in my memory here in our country. Someone correct me if I am wrong. But it does eat at me and tug at my social conscience.
Some might label this as black on black crime. I see nothing of the sort in this case. It seems they wanted to silence Mr. Bailey and threatened him prior to his murder. To me it smacks of a gang who is hiding behind the cloak of religion. Whatever the case may be, its something that should bother all Americans;
If we allow the thugs to silence our media we have nothing or no one left to tell us the truth. Silence by intimidation and assassination is not acceptable in a free country like ours. BushCo uses different methods of intimidation to gain the same result, but at least the asshats in the executive branch haven’t resorted to killing our editors and reporters.
These thugs have however, and our police and law enforcement groups have to weed them out and bring them down. The federal arm of law enforcement should be involved as well and the full measure of the rule of law needs to be meted out to these brazen sumbitches.
This kind of bullshit can not be tolerated. Nor should we tolerate the silence of the MSM on this issue.
Mr. Chauncey Bailey spent his life uncovering the dirt and the scumbags among us and he deserves more from his colleagues and more from federal law enforcement. It begs the question: Is this being ignored because of Mr. Bailey’s skin color? I hope to god that isn’t the case because that would only make it even more heinous and glaringly obvious.
Tags: Your Black Muslim Bakery, Chauncey Bailey, media intimidation
August 6th, 2007 at 5:45 am
I will correct my own blog. Here is the last time an assassination of a reporter or editor has happened:
“According to an advocacy group called the Committee to Protect Journalists, the last assassination of a journalist in the U.S. occurred 14 years ago. The most famous was in 1976, when Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, who frequently wrote about organized crime, was killed by a bomb beneath his car.”
August 6th, 2007 at 6:17 am
It sickens me to see all the celebrity b.s. on the front page every day and yet something like this happens and it gets little to no coverage. Thank you for sharing the story.
You expect journalists to be killed in third world countries or in the former Soviet Union, but not here, not in our nice, civilized U.S. of A.
Sad.
August 6th, 2007 at 6:19 am
Since it isn’t a given that thugs kill our media members..your correct that this SHOULD be on the front page of every newspaper and evening news show.
August 6th, 2007 at 6:35 am
You’d think our media members would rally and bring this story to light.
August 6th, 2007 at 6:37 am
Its not big news..trash/dirt sells..that is what dictates the front page Mr. Welsh.
August 6th, 2007 at 6:42 am
That’s very true, and just about 99.9% of our media sources are all about the money.
I wonder how it would have played out in the media if the victim was white or if the attackers were a whacked out fundamentalist Christian group.
August 6th, 2007 at 6:48 am
Well, since about 99% of our MSM is owned by large corporations, is it any wonder all they care about is the bottom line..aka money?
Plus the news divisions of each of the big 3 networks are expected to make a profit..a profit from telling us the truth a profit from educating us? WTF is that all about I ask you..actually its a rhetorical question.
August 6th, 2007 at 7:06 am
The media always supresses stories when it is someone other that whites doing the killing. There have been a few incidents where Muslims killed “white” people” and it was swept under the rug.
Like the Muslim student that ran down the white college students in CA or the Muslim that killed the Jewish women in a Synagouge in Seattle. And we never heard about the 5 black people that killed the young white couple in TN and how they tortured them. You were only able to hear the story on FOX otherwise the country would think all crimes were done against minorities.
August 6th, 2007 at 7:17 am
Well…I pay the least amount of attention to Fox and I’m aware of all those stories.
I read more stories about black on black or white on white crime than any other. Perhaps it depends on where one lives.
August 6th, 2007 at 7:18 am
Tos, I find quite the opposite occurs. Black on black crimes get plenty of attention in the media. The MSM did a week or two on the black cop that killed his white pregnant girlfriend and buried her in a shallow grave as an example.
August 6th, 2007 at 7:18 am
I don’t watch Fox Noise either.
August 6th, 2007 at 7:25 am
Dusty, that cop lives in my town, so did his girlfriend. It’s an awful story and we have yet to see what the outcome of the trial is. It got loads of coverage locally and nationally, you are correct.
August 6th, 2007 at 7:30 am
Wow Mike..you know all about that guy..is he has smarmy as has been reported?
How could you keep a cop on the force that had various problems with women including a court order to stay away from one ex-girlfrieind?
August 6th, 2007 at 7:44 am
“The MSM did a week or two on the black cop that killed his white pregnant girlfriend and buried her in a shallow grave as an example. ”
Well this story was more than just a black guy killing his white girlfriend. The guy had a history and being a cop was some of it and that he had a few kids from other women so there was more of an interest sort of speak.
Dusty-If black on black crimes get more media attention why do you think think Mr Baileys’ story isn’t getting much media?
I won’t wait for your response it’s because Muslim’s killed him.
And the 5 black people that killed and tortured the young white couple got all of 5 minutes is all I am saying. Yeah we heard about it and then it was over.
A few people I spoke to never heard that story.
August 6th, 2007 at 7:44 am
I don’t know him, but I have friends that do. Everyone says he is a nice guy, apparently a real charmer. Due to the nature of their job and the stress involved, quite a few cops have trouble with relationships, so I could easily see them keeping him on the force as long as he didn’t get into too much trouble.
August 6th, 2007 at 7:50 am
Tos, you can dismiss this event any way you like, your entitled to your opinion, but I don’t see where your comments are anything but bashing against Muslims and Blacks. The black cop killing his white girlfirend was National news..you can’t remove the color aspect of it no matter how hard to try.
My main point is..the MSM isn’t giving this story its due..for gods sake..he ran a newspaper and was killed for investigating a group of thugs..no matter what his color or their color.
Don Bolles was a white man that was killed by white men.. that story was pretty well played as I recall, but I did live in AZ at the time..so I can’t really testify to how national the story was. The mafia members were caught and convicted I believe, but I would have to look it up to be sure.
August 6th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Dusty you were the one who brought attention to the color aspect.
I wasn’t bashing anyone’s color . I was only stating your contradiction of how black on black crimes get more attention and this one didn’t and now you are talking about another story of white on white crime that got alot of coverage where you previously stated normally gets less media. So which one is it or is just that you are the one who has to stick race into everything.
Why don’t you take every murder story ever printed and count the number of words in each report and make comparisons so you can say “See it’s all about Race”
Sorry but I don’t buy it anymore.
August 6th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Do I say it is all about race? Quit putting words in my mouth tos. As expected a rightwinger made it about race.
August 6th, 2007 at 9:41 am
I made it about a Muslim committing the crime originally. That was my first point and I’m sticking to it.
The media doesn’t want people to focus on that because of people stereotyping them to begin with. Maybe they don’t want to insight any retribution.
August 6th, 2007 at 9:45 am
That a bullshit excuse for ignoring this story if I ever heard it. Its about intimidation of our reporters and our press. If they are that big a bunch of pussies they need to find another job.
August 6th, 2007 at 10:07 am
I agree but I also think it may be why just like the other 2 stories I mentioned before.
August 6th, 2007 at 10:10 am
We are talking about the EDITOR-IN-CHIEF of a newspaper..there is nothing that compares to him being assassinated and the MSM ignoring it. The FBI should be involved just like it would if someone assassinated Bush or any other top dog.
August 6th, 2007 at 10:17 am
I live in Oakland, and from what I’ve seen, the story is relegated to local-story-type news coverage. I don’t think I’ve seen it on any of the 24-hour news networks. And when the Your Black Muslim Bakery got raided last Friday (it’s a few blocks away from my office), it was all over the local news.
You’d think the MSM would be all over stories like this when one of them gets killed, like how they were all over the Daniel Pearl story. There could be many reasons for this; the laziness of current-day MSM, its lack of “sexiness” a la Li-Lo, or fear of retaliation by the very group Mr. Bailey had been investigating.
So sad that it happened, more so that it happened in my city.
August 6th, 2007 at 10:22 am
And furthermore, in these hyper-sensitive times, where anything Muslim related is considered newsworthy, I’m surprised nobody made a ham-handed attempt to link the Black Muslims to al Qaida or 9/11 or whatever. You’d think the MSM would be all over that.
/sarcasm
August 6th, 2007 at 10:30 am
Mags, this execution should be all over the news and it makes one wonder why it’s not doesn’t it??? Retribution has never been a reason for the MSM to walk away from a story. I do watch MSNBC like a fiend and I haven’t seen it either.
Intimidation of the media should be a federal offense.