WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.540 I want you to imagine a completely ordinary scenario 00:00:03.540 --> 00:00:06.320 for a second. Okay. You are walking down the 00:00:06.320 --> 00:00:09.099 street, maybe you're looking at the trees, or 00:00:09.099 --> 00:00:12.539 checking your phone, totally unbothered, just 00:00:12.539 --> 00:00:14.900 going about your day. Right, just a normal Tuesday. 00:00:15.240 --> 00:00:18.379 Exactly. And then, suddenly lights out. You are 00:00:18.379 --> 00:00:21.399 on the ground. You have absolutely no idea what 00:00:21.399 --> 00:00:23.800 just happened or who hit you. That is, yeah, 00:00:23.920 --> 00:00:26.120 that's a terrifying thought. If that sounds terrifying, 00:00:26.399 --> 00:00:29.399 it should. And for this brief, incredibly intense 00:00:29.399 --> 00:00:32.280 moment in time, it really felt like this exact 00:00:32.280 --> 00:00:34.899 nightmare was playing out everywhere. You probably 00:00:34.899 --> 00:00:37.960 remember the highly recognizable surveillance 00:00:37.960 --> 00:00:41.259 footage from October 2020. Oh, the Rick Moranis 00:00:41.259 --> 00:00:44.880 video. Yes. Totally unprovoked. A man walks right 00:00:44.880 --> 00:00:47.600 up to the 67 -year -old actor Rick Moranis on 00:00:47.600 --> 00:00:49.979 Central Park West and just delivers a single 00:00:49.979 --> 00:00:52.700 devastating blow to the head. It remains a genuinely 00:00:52.700 --> 00:00:54.979 shocking piece of footage to watch. There's no 00:00:54.979 --> 00:00:57.039 buildup, no argument. It's just an immediate 00:00:57.039 --> 00:01:00.119 strike. And it perfectly encapsulates the subject 00:01:00.119 --> 00:01:02.380 we are digging into today, which is the so -called 00:01:02.380 --> 00:01:04.900 knockout game. Right. And if you were anywhere 00:01:04.900 --> 00:01:07.140 near a television or a news feed a decade ago, 00:01:07.299 --> 00:01:10.780 you could not escape that phrase. The basic premise, 00:01:11.040 --> 00:01:13.700 looking at the sources from the time, was a random 00:01:13.700 --> 00:01:16.500 assault on a passerby, where an assailant, very 00:01:16.500 --> 00:01:18.840 often with lookouts or accomplices standing by, 00:01:19.019 --> 00:01:21.959 tries to render an unsuspecting victim unconscious 00:01:21.959 --> 00:01:25.439 with a single sucker punch. And while knockout 00:01:25.439 --> 00:01:27.859 game became the dominant catch -all term that 00:01:27.859 --> 00:01:30.500 the media eventually latched onto, it actually 00:01:30.500 --> 00:01:33.959 went by a whole host of aliases. It really depended 00:01:33.959 --> 00:01:36.159 on the era and the specific city you were in. 00:01:36.299 --> 00:01:38.769 Like what? Well, sometimes you'd see it referred 00:01:38.769 --> 00:01:41.329 to as knockout king or the much more brutally 00:01:41.329 --> 00:01:43.769 descriptive point him out, knock him out. Jeez. 00:01:44.069 --> 00:01:46.810 Yeah. There was also polar bearing, which was 00:01:46.810 --> 00:01:48.829 a term used specifically to describe instances 00:01:48.829 --> 00:01:51.549 where the victims were white and the assailants 00:01:51.549 --> 00:01:53.709 were black. And if you go back further to the 00:01:53.709 --> 00:01:56.469 late 80s and early 90s, you'll find similar random 00:01:56.469 --> 00:01:59.670 street attacks referred to as wilding or the 00:01:59.670 --> 00:02:01.790 one hitter quitter. It also definitely was not 00:02:01.790 --> 00:02:04.349 just an American phenomenon, right? Over in Europe, 00:02:04.489 --> 00:02:06.769 it was known by the rather dystopian term happy 00:02:06.769 --> 00:02:09.550 slapping. Which sounds ridiculously upbeat for 00:02:09.550 --> 00:02:11.490 what was actually happening. It really does. 00:02:11.729 --> 00:02:14.509 It was basically groups of kids using early camera 00:02:14.509 --> 00:02:17.379 phones to record brutal street assaults. OK, 00:02:17.460 --> 00:02:19.340 let's unpack this, because our mission today 00:02:19.340 --> 00:02:22.639 is to dig into our stack of sources to untangle 00:02:22.639 --> 00:02:25.120 the brutal reality of these attacks from the 00:02:25.120 --> 00:02:28.379 massive and often hysterical media panic that 00:02:28.379 --> 00:02:30.919 surrounded them. And I think this deep dive is 00:02:30.919 --> 00:02:34.039 a masterclass for you, the listener, in how street 00:02:34.039 --> 00:02:36.699 crime, social media and the 24 hour news cycle 00:02:36.699 --> 00:02:39.159 collide. We are looking at a textbook example 00:02:39.159 --> 00:02:41.879 of how a cultural narrative takes shape. Going 00:02:41.879 --> 00:02:43.800 into the research for this, my baseline assumption 00:02:43.800 --> 00:02:46.919 was that this had to be a modern smartphone era 00:02:46.919 --> 00:02:49.419 phenomenon. You know, kids performing for an 00:02:49.419 --> 00:02:51.500 online audience to get viral fame or whatever. 00:02:51.719 --> 00:02:53.780 It's a fair assumption. But the records indicate 00:02:53.780 --> 00:02:56.120 that the violence itself is not a new phenomenon 00:02:56.120 --> 00:02:58.819 at all. We can actually trace the specific game 00:02:58.819 --> 00:03:02.759 aspect all the way back to September 1992. The 00:03:02.759 --> 00:03:06.449 MIT case. Right. Yngve Raustein, a Norwegian 00:03:06.449 --> 00:03:09.689 exchange student studying at MIT, was just walking 00:03:09.689 --> 00:03:11.409 down the street when he was attacked by three 00:03:11.409 --> 00:03:14.150 teenagers. They later told prosecutors they were 00:03:14.150 --> 00:03:16.710 playing a game called Knockout. Raustein was 00:03:16.710 --> 00:03:18.469 stabbed and killed after falling to the ground. 00:03:18.689 --> 00:03:20.629 And if you look at the psychological mechanics 00:03:20.629 --> 00:03:24.129 of that 1992 attack, there was a chilling rule 00:03:24.129 --> 00:03:26.370 built into their version of the game. If the 00:03:26.370 --> 00:03:28.590 primary assailant failed to knock out the target 00:03:28.590 --> 00:03:31.289 with that single punch, his own companions would 00:03:31.289 --> 00:03:34.580 turn on him instead. Wow. That is an incredibly 00:03:34.580 --> 00:03:37.460 dark peer pressure dynamic. It is. It totally 00:03:37.460 --> 00:03:40.240 weaponizes the group dynamic. But while the senseless 00:03:40.240 --> 00:03:42.719 violence wasn't new, the technological shift 00:03:42.719 --> 00:03:45.639 of the mid -2000s undeniably changed the nature 00:03:45.639 --> 00:03:47.520 of the crime. Right. It went from a localized 00:03:47.520 --> 00:03:50.020 act of aggression to a performative broadcast. 00:03:50.479 --> 00:03:54.199 Precisely. Because of the cameras. By 2005, BBC 00:03:54.199 --> 00:03:57.139 News was thoroughly documenting those UK happy 00:03:57.139 --> 00:03:59.330 slapping incidents you mentioned earlier. Where 00:03:59.330 --> 00:04:01.250 the primary objective wasn't just the assault. 00:04:01.449 --> 00:04:04.189 Exactly. The objective was to capture the violence 00:04:04.189 --> 00:04:07.349 on video and post it online. It disrupted communities 00:04:07.349 --> 00:04:10.090 so severely that the French government under 00:04:10.090 --> 00:04:12.650 Nicolas Sarkozy actually took drastic action. 00:04:12.789 --> 00:04:14.849 They passed a national law making it illegal 00:04:14.849 --> 00:04:18.250 to film and post acts of violence online specifically 00:04:18.250 --> 00:04:21.850 to combat this exact trend. To fundamentally 00:04:21.850 --> 00:04:24.290 change a country's legal framework over Internet 00:04:24.290 --> 00:04:27.410 videos in 2005 is a massive deal. But regardless 00:04:27.410 --> 00:04:29.649 of what you call it or whether there's a camera 00:04:29.649 --> 00:04:32.670 rolling, the human cost here is just devastating. 00:04:32.730 --> 00:04:34.970 Absolutely. When you look past the media buzzwords, 00:04:35.089 --> 00:04:38.230 the actual toll is staggering. We have a trail 00:04:38.230 --> 00:04:41.009 of tragedies in the sources. Take a 2009 case 00:04:41.009 --> 00:04:43.750 in Decatur, Illinois. A 61 -year -old bicyclist 00:04:43.750 --> 00:04:45.490 was stomped to death by a group of teens who 00:04:45.490 --> 00:04:47.310 were playing point -em -out, knock -em -out. 00:04:47.389 --> 00:04:50.290 Or the incredibly tragic 2011 case in St. Louis, 00:04:50.410 --> 00:04:53.220 Missouri. A 72 -year -old man, Hong Nguyen, was 00:04:53.220 --> 00:04:55.860 killed, and his 62 -year -old wife, Yen, was 00:04:55.860 --> 00:04:58.720 badly injured in a random attack. The assailant 00:04:58.720 --> 00:05:00.480 in that case was an 18 -year -old named Alex 00:05:00.480 --> 00:05:02.959 Murphy. He was ultimately convicted and sentenced 00:05:02.959 --> 00:05:05.339 to life in prison plus an additional 25 years. 00:05:05.660 --> 00:05:09.319 Then you look at Chicago in 2012. A 62 -year 00:05:09.319 --> 00:05:12.259 -old man named Delfino Mora was killed. And the 00:05:12.259 --> 00:05:14.939 judicial system did not hold back on anyone involved. 00:05:15.540 --> 00:05:17.939 Anthony Malcolm, the guy who simply filmed the 00:05:17.939 --> 00:05:20.040 attack, he didn't even throw the punch, got 30 00:05:20.040 --> 00:05:23.100 years in prison. 30 years just for filming. Yes. 00:05:23.279 --> 00:05:26.259 His accomplices, the actual attackers, received 00:05:26.259 --> 00:05:30.220 27 and 33 years. Lives ended and multiple other 00:05:30.220 --> 00:05:32.540 lives were thrown away behind bars. What's fascinating 00:05:32.540 --> 00:05:34.920 here is the bizarre gamification of violence. 00:05:35.500 --> 00:05:38.000 By assigning these horrible life -ending acts 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:40.660 a playful, almost sport -like name like Knockout 00:05:40.660 --> 00:05:43.459 King, it created a false umbrella. And that is 00:05:43.459 --> 00:05:46.420 exactly why understanding these distinct, disconnected 00:05:46.420 --> 00:05:49.160 tragedies became incredibly difficult when the 00:05:49.160 --> 00:05:51.120 media started grouping them together. And that 00:05:51.120 --> 00:05:53.399 media grouping hit an absolute fever pitch in 00:05:53.399 --> 00:05:55.920 2013. That is the year this phenomenon seemingly 00:05:55.920 --> 00:05:58.560 exploded. You see a massive spike in reports 00:05:58.560 --> 00:06:01.379 all across the country. In Syracuse, a man named 00:06:01.379 --> 00:06:03.660 Michael Daniels died. In Hoboken, New Jersey, 00:06:03.759 --> 00:06:05.639 Ralph Santiago, a disabled homeless man, was 00:06:05.639 --> 00:06:07.779 found dead after being attacked. Yale University 00:06:07.779 --> 00:06:10.100 police even issued campus -wide alerts after 00:06:10.100 --> 00:06:12.240 seven separate attacks took place in a single 00:06:12.240 --> 00:06:15.420 month. The sheer volume of reports in 2013 made 00:06:15.420 --> 00:06:19.360 it feel inescapable. But the epicenter of the 00:06:19.360 --> 00:06:21.360 panic and the place where the narrative took 00:06:21.360 --> 00:06:24.819 a sharp turn was Brooklyn. Specifically, the 00:06:24.819 --> 00:06:26.680 Crown Heights neighborhood. Right. Crown Heights 00:06:26.680 --> 00:06:28.779 saw a sudden string of attacks where the victims 00:06:28.779 --> 00:06:30.680 were Jewish. The tension in the neighborhood 00:06:30.680 --> 00:06:34.689 skyrocketed. A suspect named Amrit Mirage was 00:06:34.689 --> 00:06:37.970 arrested and explicitly charged with a hate crime 00:06:37.970 --> 00:06:40.769 in connection to the assaults. Now, it should 00:06:40.769 --> 00:06:43.589 be noted he firmly denied the charges and any 00:06:43.589 --> 00:06:46.569 anti -Semitic motive. But the damage to the community's 00:06:46.569 --> 00:06:50.360 sense of safety was done. Exactly. The NYPD heavily 00:06:50.360 --> 00:06:53.160 stepped up patrols in the area, and the Anti 00:06:53.160 --> 00:06:55.240 -Defamation League had to issue a public statement 00:06:55.240 --> 00:06:57.699 specifically addressing attacks targeting Jewish 00:06:57.699 --> 00:06:59.480 individuals in Brooklyn. And we should probably 00:06:59.480 --> 00:07:01.240 do a quick rule check here for you listening. 00:07:01.439 --> 00:07:04.399 We are diving into some incredibly heated political 00:07:04.399 --> 00:07:08.019 and racial territory from 2013. We are impartially 00:07:08.019 --> 00:07:10.100 reporting the contents of the sources and not 00:07:10.100 --> 00:07:12.319 endorsing any political viewpoint. We're just 00:07:12.319 --> 00:07:14.319 looking at how these political flashpoints fueled 00:07:14.319 --> 00:07:16.899 the media fire. Absolutely. We're just the messengers 00:07:16.899 --> 00:07:19.860 here. And in Brooklyn, that political controversy 00:07:19.860 --> 00:07:22.120 centered around a newly elected Democratic City 00:07:22.120 --> 00:07:25.459 Councilwoman named Lori Kumbo. She posted a lengthy 00:07:25.459 --> 00:07:28.019 letter on her Facebook page attempting to explain 00:07:28.019 --> 00:07:30.959 the root causes of the attacks. And what did 00:07:30.959 --> 00:07:33.199 she say? She suggested that the accomplishments 00:07:33.199 --> 00:07:35.240 of the Jewish community might have triggered 00:07:35.240 --> 00:07:37.920 feelings of resentment among black youth, creating 00:07:37.920 --> 00:07:40.759 a sense that Jewish success wasn't also their 00:07:40.759 --> 00:07:43.500 success. The backlash to that was immediate and 00:07:43.500 --> 00:07:46.800 severe. The ADL publicly called her post troubling, 00:07:47.139 --> 00:07:50.259 stating that it evoked classic anti -Semitic 00:07:50.259 --> 00:07:52.680 stereotypes regarding Jewish wealth and control. 00:07:53.100 --> 00:07:56.019 Kumbo did later issue a formal apology for those 00:07:56.019 --> 00:07:58.980 remarks. But the entire episode highlights just 00:07:58.980 --> 00:08:01.339 how quickly this ceased being just a crime story. 00:08:01.579 --> 00:08:04.120 It became a massive flashpoint for deep -seated 00:08:04.120 --> 00:08:06.779 racial and cultural tensions. The media narrative 00:08:06.779 --> 00:08:09.680 became hyper focused on this one very specific 00:08:09.680 --> 00:08:12.060 demographic dynamic black assailants attacking 00:08:12.060 --> 00:08:14.100 white or Jewish victims. But when you actually 00:08:14.100 --> 00:08:16.680 read the reports, the reality of random street 00:08:16.680 --> 00:08:19.259 violence rarely fits perfectly into one neat 00:08:19.259 --> 00:08:22.120 demographic box. Which brings us to a frankly 00:08:22.120 --> 00:08:25.399 bizarre twist. Here's where it gets really interesting. 00:08:26.250 --> 00:08:30.069 In November 2013, this entire media narrative 00:08:30.069 --> 00:08:33.269 was flipped on its head in Katy, Texas. The Conrad 00:08:33.269 --> 00:08:36.230 Alvin Barrett case. Yes. Barrett was a 29 -year 00:08:36.230 --> 00:08:38.549 -old white man who decided to participate in 00:08:38.549 --> 00:08:41.649 the phenomenon. But he explicitly hunted for 00:08:41.649 --> 00:08:44.750 a black victim. He eventually found an 81 -year 00:08:44.750 --> 00:08:47.690 -old black man walking alone and hit him so hard 00:08:47.690 --> 00:08:50.320 that he broke the elderly man's jaw. Barrett 00:08:50.320 --> 00:08:52.899 wasn't just participating in a trend. He was 00:08:52.899 --> 00:08:55.279 actively trying to manipulate the media coverage 00:08:55.279 --> 00:08:58.480 of it. He recorded himself using racial epithets 00:08:58.480 --> 00:09:01.019 and literally wondering aloud if a white -on 00:09:01.019 --> 00:09:02.860 -black attack would get national media attention. 00:09:03.139 --> 00:09:05.379 He was testing the news cycle to see if the outrage 00:09:05.379 --> 00:09:08.039 was about the violence itself or about the races 00:09:08.039 --> 00:09:10.379 of the people involved. It's an incredibly twisted 00:09:10.379 --> 00:09:13.559 mindset. And from a legal standpoint, this case 00:09:13.559 --> 00:09:15.919 is highly significant. Because of his explicit 00:09:15.919 --> 00:09:18.620 recorded motives, this was the only time the 00:09:18.620 --> 00:09:20.679 U .S. Justice Department got involved to charge 00:09:20.679 --> 00:09:23.059 a knockout attack as a federal hate crime. His 00:09:23.059 --> 00:09:24.840 defense attorney attempted to argue that Barrett 00:09:24.840 --> 00:09:27.059 was suffering from unmedicated bipolar disorder, 00:09:27.220 --> 00:09:29.860 right? They did. But the federal judge still 00:09:29.860 --> 00:09:32.970 sentenced him to 71 months in prison. So if you 00:09:32.970 --> 00:09:35.409 step back and look at the landscape in late 2013, 00:09:35.629 --> 00:09:38.409 from the tension in Brooklyn to the hate crime 00:09:38.409 --> 00:09:41.269 in Texas to the tragic deaths, politicians were 00:09:41.269 --> 00:09:43.370 desperately scrambling to figure out how to stop 00:09:43.370 --> 00:09:45.330 this. They wanted to use legislative muscle. 00:09:45.649 --> 00:09:48.330 Exactly. In New York, Republican Assemblyman 00:09:48.330 --> 00:09:51.669 Jim Tedisco proposed the Knockout Assault Deterrent 00:09:51.669 --> 00:09:54.980 Act. It sought to charge juvenile attackers as 00:09:54.980 --> 00:09:58.120 adults across the board and severely punish anyone 00:09:58.120 --> 00:10:00.519 who even recorded the attacks. Which echoes the 00:10:00.519 --> 00:10:03.100 2005 French law we discussed earlier. But not 00:10:03.100 --> 00:10:05.159 everyone agreed that a new law was the right 00:10:05.159 --> 00:10:07.720 tactic. Democratic Assemblyman John McDonald 00:10:07.720 --> 00:10:10.860 argued against it. He agreed that stiffer penalties 00:10:10.860 --> 00:10:12.919 were warranted, but he pointed out that assault 00:10:12.919 --> 00:10:15.679 is already illegal. Creating a highly specific 00:10:15.679 --> 00:10:18.639 branded bill wasn't necessary. Meanwhile, Wisconsin 00:10:18.639 --> 00:10:21.120 Republican Dean Koffer was considering a very 00:10:21.120 --> 00:10:23.559 similar deterrent bill for his state. But the 00:10:23.559 --> 00:10:25.519 pushback wasn't just coming for the legislature. 00:10:26.179 --> 00:10:28.500 Community leaders built a surprisingly diverse 00:10:28.500 --> 00:10:31.940 and vocal coalition to condemn the game. We're 00:10:31.940 --> 00:10:35.019 talking rapid -fire denouncements. Brooklyn District 00:10:35.019 --> 00:10:38.000 Attorney Kenneth P. Thompson, Eric Adams, Reverend 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:40.580 Al Sharpton, Russell Simmons. Former NYC Mayor 00:10:40.580 --> 00:10:43.799 David Dinkins had that slogan, no to KO. Yes. 00:10:44.059 --> 00:10:46.860 Even retired boxer Mike Tyson went on the Piers 00:10:46.860 --> 00:10:49.360 Morgan show to weigh in. He completely stripped 00:10:49.360 --> 00:10:52.259 the game aspect away and said these perpetrators 00:10:52.259 --> 00:10:55.129 were just evil people doing evil things. That 00:10:55.129 --> 00:10:58.090 is a fascinating distillation of the issue. Yet 00:10:58.090 --> 00:11:00.710 amidst all this public condemnation, the actual 00:11:00.710 --> 00:11:02.769 police chiefs were facing a massive strategic 00:11:02.769 --> 00:11:05.830 dilemma. How so? Well, NYPD Commissioner Raymond 00:11:05.830 --> 00:11:08.070 Kelly and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter both 00:11:08.070 --> 00:11:11.190 explicitly refused to use the term knockout game. 00:11:11.690 --> 00:11:13.750 If we connect this to the bigger picture, you 00:11:13.750 --> 00:11:15.710 start to see the law enforcement logic. Because 00:11:15.710 --> 00:11:18.789 naming it gives it power. Exactly. The police 00:11:18.789 --> 00:11:21.269 knew that validating the game by using its catchy 00:11:21.269 --> 00:11:23.669 brand name would almost certainly spawn copycats. 00:11:23.850 --> 00:11:26.789 They absolutely did not want to hand disaffected 00:11:26.789 --> 00:11:29.490 youth a nationally recognized banner to fly under. 00:11:29.769 --> 00:11:32.409 And that strategic hesitation brings us to the 00:11:32.409 --> 00:11:35.950 biggest question of this whole deep dive. Have 00:11:35.950 --> 00:11:39.750 you as a listener ever noticed how the news can 00:11:39.750 --> 00:11:42.529 make a rare event feel like it's happening everywhere. 00:11:42.809 --> 00:11:45.570 It's a classic media distortion because by late 00:11:45.570 --> 00:11:48.590 2013 political analysts and journalists started 00:11:48.590 --> 00:11:50.830 asking if the knockout game was a real trend 00:11:50.830 --> 00:11:53.889 or just a media panic built out of isolated incidents. 00:11:54.149 --> 00:11:56.649 The statistics are really telling here. Jamel 00:11:56.649 --> 00:11:59.070 Bowie of The Daily Beast directly compared the 00:11:59.070 --> 00:12:01.750 knockout panic to the wilding panic and those 00:12:01.750 --> 00:12:04.190 urban legends about gang members shooting you 00:12:04.190 --> 00:12:05.950 if you flash your headlights at them. Right. 00:12:06.070 --> 00:12:08.750 He pointed out a crucial mathematical reality. 00:12:09.009 --> 00:12:14.710 In 2012 alone, the FBI reported 127 ,577 unarmed 00:12:14.710 --> 00:12:17.389 assaults in the United States. Over 127 ,000. 00:12:17.409 --> 00:12:19.769 Exactly. When you have a baseline of over 100 00:12:19.769 --> 00:12:22.309 ,000 random assaults, pulling a dozen of them 00:12:22.309 --> 00:12:24.529 out and looping the footage on cable news makes 00:12:24.529 --> 00:12:26.919 it really hard to... statistically prove a game 00:12:26.919 --> 00:12:29.480 trend. It just proves that street violence exists. 00:12:29.740 --> 00:12:32.320 And honestly, the journalism surrounding this 00:12:32.320 --> 00:12:35.460 phenomena was getting incredibly sloppy. Jesse 00:12:35.460 --> 00:12:37.700 Single wrote an investigation for the Columbia 00:12:37.700 --> 00:12:40.460 Journalism Review. He proved that, yes, the game 00:12:40.460 --> 00:12:42.659 existed locally. It wasn't a total hoax. But 00:12:42.659 --> 00:12:44.580 he found the media was sparking an unnecessary 00:12:44.580 --> 00:12:47.259 race -driven panic through careless reporting. 00:12:47.559 --> 00:12:49.539 The East London footage is the perfect example 00:12:49.539 --> 00:12:52.679 of that. Oh, this detail is staggering. U .S. 00:12:52.700 --> 00:12:55.220 local news stations were airing this truly terrifying 00:12:55.220 --> 00:12:58.320 CCTV footage of a woman getting completely blindsided 00:12:58.320 --> 00:13:01.100 and punched from behind. They played it constantly 00:13:01.100 --> 00:13:03.379 to visually illustrate the American knockout 00:13:03.379 --> 00:13:05.529 game epidemic. But that footage was actually 00:13:05.529 --> 00:13:08.350 from East London. Yes. It had absolutely nothing 00:13:08.350 --> 00:13:10.350 to do with the American trend. It was just scary 00:13:10.350 --> 00:13:12.409 video that fit the narrative, so they aired it. 00:13:12.850 --> 00:13:15.669 The coverage became so disjointed that MSNBC's 00:13:15.669 --> 00:13:18.350 Chris Hayes actually gave the knockout game his 00:13:18.350 --> 00:13:21.399 award for Overcovered Stories of the Year. We 00:13:21.399 --> 00:13:23.399 also have to acknowledge the demographics being 00:13:23.399 --> 00:13:25.940 questioned. Robin Obcarian at the Los Angeles 00:13:25.940 --> 00:13:28.320 Times was highly critical of how the story was 00:13:28.320 --> 00:13:30.820 framed. She argued that conservative analysts 00:13:30.820 --> 00:13:33.519 were pushing a lazy narrative of black teens 00:13:33.519 --> 00:13:35.980 randomly attacking white people. She cited the 00:13:35.980 --> 00:13:38.779 Texas case with Barrett as a counterpoint. And 00:13:38.779 --> 00:13:41.679 she highlighted DeJure Washington. He was a black 00:13:41.679 --> 00:13:45.139 teen who assaulted a white man in 2011. Bill 00:13:45.139 --> 00:13:47.840 O 'Reilly actually played the video. of that 00:13:47.840 --> 00:13:50.620 specific assault on his show to fan the flames 00:13:50.620 --> 00:13:53.580 of racial hatred. But the kicker is that Washington 00:13:53.580 --> 00:13:55.940 later went on Nightline to discuss the incident. 00:13:56.299 --> 00:13:58.379 He claimed the attack had absolutely nothing 00:13:58.379 --> 00:14:01.120 to do with race. And he said that at the time 00:14:01.120 --> 00:14:03.220 he threw the punch, he had never even heard of 00:14:03.220 --> 00:14:04.840 the knockout game. He didn't even know he was 00:14:04.840 --> 00:14:06.840 playing the game the media accused him of playing. 00:14:07.289 --> 00:14:09.870 When you have a nationwide panic vibrating at 00:14:09.870 --> 00:14:12.850 that frequency, it breeds false reports. Like 00:14:12.850 --> 00:14:15.549 the woman in St. Louis. Exactly. She went to 00:14:15.549 --> 00:14:17.590 the police falsely claiming she was a victim 00:14:17.590 --> 00:14:20.610 of the knockout game. But an investigation revealed 00:14:20.610 --> 00:14:23.769 her own boyfriend had hit her. She completely 00:14:23.769 --> 00:14:26.370 made up the knockout story to cover for him because 00:14:26.370 --> 00:14:28.470 she knew it was the hottest topic on the news. 00:14:28.690 --> 00:14:30.629 This raises an important question about how we 00:14:30.629 --> 00:14:33.190 consume information. During the height of the 00:14:33.190 --> 00:14:35.490 panic, even the people physically on the ground 00:14:35.490 --> 00:14:38.279 couldn't agree on the scale. Right. St. Louis 00:14:38.279 --> 00:14:40.559 police said the game was limited to maybe five 00:14:40.559 --> 00:14:44.000 to nine kids in the entire city. But when local 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:46.659 teenagers were interviewed, they claimed 10 to 00:14:46.659 --> 00:14:49.980 15 percent of their peers played the game. Who 00:14:49.980 --> 00:14:52.940 do you believe? So what does this all mean? We've 00:14:52.940 --> 00:14:55.539 combed through the origins, the horrific tragedies, 00:14:55.539 --> 00:14:58.100 the political grandstanding and the media panic. 00:14:58.159 --> 00:15:01.059 And what this deep dive reveals is an incredibly 00:15:01.059 --> 00:15:04.950 complex web. Yes, brutal, senseless, gamified 00:15:04.950 --> 00:15:07.409 violence absolutely occurred. It destroyed lives. 00:15:07.629 --> 00:15:10.029 That is an undeniable fact. But the packaging 00:15:10.029 --> 00:15:12.470 of these disparate, disconnected street crimes 00:15:12.470 --> 00:15:15.370 into one overarching race -driven media epidemic 00:15:15.370 --> 00:15:18.409 often distorted reality. It led to sloppy reporting 00:15:18.409 --> 00:15:20.669 and widespread panic. And I want to remind you, 00:15:20.690 --> 00:15:22.889 the listener, that your superpower as a learner 00:15:22.889 --> 00:15:25.370 is the ability to look past those sensational 00:15:25.370 --> 00:15:28.009 headlines. You have to look at the raw data and 00:15:28.009 --> 00:15:30.789 the humanity underneath the panic. I want to 00:15:30.789 --> 00:15:32.409 leave you with a final thought to mull over on 00:15:32.409 --> 00:15:34.230 your own today. We've talked about the media 00:15:34.230 --> 00:15:36.230 reporting on the knockout game to warn the public. 00:15:36.370 --> 00:15:39.289 But consider the psychological observer effect 00:15:39.289 --> 00:15:42.470 in physics. Does the act of observing something 00:15:42.470 --> 00:15:45.169 change it? That's a great point. By taking random, 00:15:45.250 --> 00:15:47.809 disconnected acts of street violence, giving 00:15:47.809 --> 00:15:50.129 them a catchy brand name, and giving them national 00:15:50.129 --> 00:15:53.309 airtime, did the 24 -hour news cycle inadvertently 00:15:53.309 --> 00:15:56.389 provide the exact fame structure, and rulebook 00:15:56.389 --> 00:15:59.169 needed to turn a scattered set of crimes into 00:15:59.169 --> 00:16:01.289 a self -fulfilling prophecy. Did the warning 00:16:01.289 --> 00:16:03.929 create the game? It is a heavy question to consider. 00:16:04.169 --> 00:16:06.149 Always keep questioning the narrative. Thank 00:16:06.149 --> 00:16:07.850 you so much for joining us and we will catch 00:16:07.850 --> 00:16:09.389 you on the next deep dive.