July 10, 2016

On June 10, 2016 I watched Face the Nation on CBS. The host was John Dickerson. This week’s guests were Mayor Mike Rawlings, Secretary J. Johnson, Officer William Bratton, NAACP President Cornell Brooks, Representative Elijah Cummings, and Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The pundits were Chief of Police Terrence Cunningham, Director-Counsel of NAACP Sherrilyn Ifill, Wesley Lowery from Washington Post, and CBS News Correspondent Jeff Pegues.

The main topic of discussion this week was violent protest against the police all across the country. The first guest was Mike Rawlings. Mike claimed that he hopes Dallas can set an example to the rest of the country by not holding the Black Lives Matter group, as a whole, responsible for all of the acts of hostility against the police. The next guests were Secretary Jeh Johnson and William Bratton. Their interview began with the host asking Johnson about the shooting in Dallas. Johnson responded, “It is a time to come together, to heal, and to mourn. Though we have to remember that the shooter should not reflect upon the whole community and that use excessive force should not reflect upon law enforcement.“ John Dickerson proceeded to ask William Bratton on how do the police officers all across the nation feel about the current events. William replied that there is a lot of pressure on the officers currently, and it is constantly improving to fix the problems we are having currently. Some of the examples were training to improve and lessen the use of force, diversity in the police force, and are working towards closing the gap between the community and the police force. When asked about if they suspected a tragedy like the one in Dallas he replied, “No, they were attempting to plan for the worst and hope for the best, but Dallas was beyond anyone’s speculation.” Personally I just can’t believe a U.S citizen attacked and killed policemen, whom have protected this country and died from a person they were attempting to protect. The next guest was the president of the NAACP, Cornell Brooks. He started off by saying that racial relations have gone down but are not where they should be. He then stated that an African American male is more likely to be shot than his white counterpart. Now at first I was intrigued by this statement, and proceeded to do some research. I found that his claim of police using lethal force on African Americans due to race was incorrect. Through this research I found that there was a disproportionate amount of nonlethal force used against African Americans, but there was not an increase in the amount of lethal force being used due to race. However I did enjoy watching him due to his straight forwardness and conviction. Next on the show was Elijah Cummings. During his brief interview he brought up a very important point that the others barely touched on. Elijah mainly talked about how the police and the community both need to work on their relationship with each other due to the fact that the police can’t do their job without the community and the community will not be able to retain order without the police. The next person to be interviewed was Rudy Giuliani. John Dickerson started off the interview by asking what did Rudy think about Newt Gingrich ironically stating, he is Caucasian, white Americans do not understand the dangers of being African American. Rudy replied that he agrees and that both communities need to work together to solve this problem. Rudy claimed that he believes that African Americans need to be aware of the fact that instead of being wary of the police shooting, which he claims happens rarely, they need to instead be wary of thugs and criminals. He claims that thugs and criminals that may live near them kill every fourteen hours, opposed to the random incidents of police shootings. Rudy ended his interview by claiming, “... Callings themselves Black Lives Matter is inherently racist, and that black lives matter, white lives matter, Asian lives matter, and Hispanic lives matter. The fact that they call themselves Black Lives Matter is anti-American and racist due to them focusing only on the black lives.” The next session was with the pundits. The first one was Terrence Cunningham. Terrence started the discussion by claiming the Dallas police force was something every police force should strive to be. He pointed out that during the protest they not only controlled order over the duration but they also guarded it. He claimed that when the first shot was fired the police ran to protect the protesters, not knowing that they themselves were the targets, and used themselves as human shields to protect the protesters. Sherrilyn Ifill argued that the police do not take responsibility for their actions like in Baton Rouge and Minnesota. Wesley commented on Rudy’s earlier statement about the target and pressure being on the police. Wesley claimed that the media and the people focus on the police shootings instead of the murders due to the police being an extension of the government and the thought of any part of the government killing its citizens were a crazy one. Personally while I do understand his view I do have to disagree about blowing it out of proportion due to the fact that it hinders the police from doing their job without conflict, which causes these situations. Jeff then commented that he believes that the current police targeting and accusations are caused by the lack of trust with the police by the community.

I think John Dickerson did an average job on hosting only due to the fact that he remained silent for a huge portion of the show, but he did an excellent job on choosing the guests. Secretary Jeh Johnson and William Bratton did a great job on the show by each providing a view of the pro-BLM(Black Lives Matter) and the police force. Cornell Brooks did a great job on the show he completely believed everything he said, even though his statement was wrong, and proceeded to go straight to the point. Rudy Giuliani was a great guest. He provided new views and interesting ideas. The pundits were great and cooperated to prove their points and used what the previous pundit said to explain their own view. Though by the end of the show I am now skeptical about how much order the police will be able to maintain due to all of the tension in the air raised by the NAACP and the BLM.