MSNBC's "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough has been direct in putting down use of the symbolic "hands up" gesture that many have taken to using in a public forum to show solidarity with Ferguson, Missouri, and the police shooting of black teen Michael Brown,
Mediaite reports.
His cable news colleague, Chris Hayes, however, has battled back, creating a harsh divide among the newscasters that parallels, in a way, the same polarizing reactions the incident has created around the country.
Writing in Politico, in a column titled "Truth Trumps Hype in Ferguson," Scarborough minced no words, noting conflicting testimony and what he views the dishonesty of members of Congress as well as several NFL players, who have shown their solidarity by using the "don't shoot" movement.
"It is offensive because the gesture suggests that a police officer pointed a gun and shot a black man whose arms were in the air while he said 'hands up, don't shoot," Scarborough wrote.
"The fact is that there is no credible evidence that remotely supports the absurd claim that ever happened," he added. "But then again, protesters also falsely claimed that Officer Darren Wilson stood over Michael Brown while shooting bullets into his dying body. And, of course, Brown's friend who accompanied him during the convenience store robbery also claimed that Michael Brown was shot in the back. That, too, was a lie."
Meanwhile, Hayes was equally outraged by public commentary that did not support the perception of many that Brown may have been shot by an officer out of control.
"There are so many issues here that Mike Brown and Ferguson represent that are broader than what happened on Canfield Drive. I refuse to allow people to not be factual about what we did and did not learn from the grand jury testimony," Hayes said on his "All In" program as he discussed the issue NBC legal analyst Lisa Bloom,
Talking Points Memo reported.
"There is a narrative that we see in certain quarters that the gesture itself of putting your hands up is to perpetuate a lie about the last moments of Michael Brown’s life, as if the grand jury testimony and the forensic evidence definitively show that Mike Brown was not shot with his hands in the air," he said.
“While that is how the evidence has been framed by [St. Louis County prosecuting attorney] Bob McCulloch and many others, that is not what is actually in the thousands of pages of grand jury documents," he said.
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