If you depend on CNN for your news, then you would think that Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a racist allegation today that sheriffs have a proud white heritage.
CNN’s headline about Mr. Sessions’ speech to the National Sheriffs Association: “Sessions invokes ‘Anglo-American heritage’ of sheriff’s office”
What Sessions actually said is that independently-elected sheriffs have been a “critical part of our legal heritage” since before the American revolution. He was reflecting on the merits of a system that began in pre-colonial England in which the people choose who is in charge of enforcing the laws that we must follow and praising American sheriffs for upholding that tradition so well.
Here are his exact words: “I want to thank every sheriff in America. Since our founding, the independently elected sheriff has been the people’s protector, who keeps law enforcement close to and accountable to people through the elected process. The office of sheriff is a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.”
There was no racial connotation or overtone whatsoever in this statement, and CNN knew it when they wrote their headline.
How do we know this? The last paragraph of the CNN article gives it away:
“The concept of the office of sheriff — being an independent, elected law enforcement entity — originates in Anglo-Saxon England. The word ‘sheriff’ combines the Anglo-Saxon words ‘shire,’ meaning ‘county,’ and ‘reeve,’ meaning ‘guardian,’ Cato analyst David Kopel notes in The Washington Post.
So, CNN chose a headline for its article about Attorney General Sessions’ speech that was deliberately worded to defame him with a false impression that he made a racist statement that CNN knew he didn’t make.
Author: Committed Conservative
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