Does a George Floyd Quackumentary Deserve to be Treated Like Valid Journalism?

The Fifth Column tries to rewrite its credulous take on The Fall of Minneapolis by going on the offensive

Bodycam footage of George Floyd prior to his murder.

Radley Balko’s essay at The UnPopulist last week, “The War on the Woke Trumps the Truth for Many Heterodox Thinkers,” has been lauded by figures from across the political spectrum. In it, Balko offered a summation—a sort of closing argument—of his 30,000-word series thoroughly debunking Coleman Hughes’ claim in The Free Press, Bari Weiss’ publication, that Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis cop who murdered George Floyd, was wrongfully convicted because of the violent political climate created by a single, out-of-context, viral clip. The famous clip showed Chauvin, a white cop, brutally kneeling on Floyd’s neck for over eight-and-a-half minutes, even as Floyd moaned that he couldn’t breathe, until he lost consciousness and died as onlookers watched in horror.

Hughes’ piece was based on The Fall of Minneapolis, a propagandistic and conspiratorial documentary that became an instant hit among right-wing extremists when it came out last fall. After doing a purported deep dive into the documentary’s claims, Hughes concluded, “I believe that Chauvin should not have been convicted of murder.” Coleman, who is African American himself, urged that it was time to “consider the possibility that Chauvin was not a murderer, but a scapegoat.” He effectively backed the documentary’s searing indictment of Minneapolis’ political authorities, prosecution, police officers, and the jury who allegedly were so collectively cowed by the BLM mob that they convicted Chauvin for felony murder and dispatched him to prison for 22 years despite massive holes in the case.

Radley, a veteran crime reporter, exposed Hughes’ “investigation” as amateurish and error filled. Radley has made a career out of revealing the flaws in America’s criminal justice system. But this was one instance when justice was actually done, he argued, and ruminated in his essay as to why so many heterodox thinkers were having difficulty accepting that. (To find the answer, those of you who haven’t already read his essay should drop everything and do so!)

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The War on the Woke Trumps the Truth for Many Heterodox Thinkers

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But among those who were deeply offended by Radley’s piece were the hosts of The Fifth Column, a popular podcast hosted by two of his and my former colleagues from Reason magazine, Matt Welch and Michael Moynihan and also Kmele Foster.* (I know Kmele, but not well, having run into him maybe three times; I don’t recall exchanging anything more than a few minutes of pleasantries and few direct messages, some nice and some testy, in the past—important context to bear in mind as you read.) What triggered Foster and Welch (Moynihan, as best as I know, has stayed out of it) wasn’t his substantive critique but half a sentence in Radley’s piece explaining that the reason he devoted the last few months of his life investigating the documentary’s claims was that, along with Hughes and celebrated podcast hosts Glenn Loury and John McWhorter, “the film was amplified on the libertarian-leaning The Fifth Column podcast.” Radley’s clear implication was that these were respectable voices that deserved to be taken more seriously than yahoos like Tucker Carlson and other right-wing rabble-rousers who celebrated the film from the start.

Foster and Welch took deep umbrage at the word “amplified” and that Radley had name-checked them at all. They were also incensed that in his Reason debate with Hughes the day before The UnPopulist piece was published, Radley said, “The Fifth Column podcast talked about [the documentary] in a slightly skeptical, but mostly in a sort of way of endorsing a lot of its claims, or at least giving them credibility.” (If you read this piece to the end, you’ll realize just how charitable Radley was.)

Loury and McWhorter, to their immense credit, took back their original endorsement of the film and offered a mea culpa in light of Radley’s investigation. Loury has reflected on how his own self-description as “heterodox” (his word) might have interfered with his judgment and led him to accept the claims of the documentary:

The question for us is, were we too credulous? Not that we should have ignored it, but that we should have been more skeptical about it, particularly about its technical claims, which challenged the limits of our own expertise in terms of being able to evaluate them. (Emphasis added because we’ll pick up on this later.)

Also, Loury acknowledged that Radley had convincingly shown that Hughes was “way out over his skis.” And he dug into Weiss. “What kind of outfit is she running over there? Is she subject to the same temptations that we are as we inhabit this role of anti-wokeness, to quickly embrace something that we ought to think twice about before we jump?”

But what did The Fifth Column folks do? Instead of critically re-examining their own treatment of the documentary and urging Weiss and Hughes to do the same, Foster sent me several irate private messages on X culminating in a call for a “formal apology” for “vaguely smearing” their podcast.

A “formal apology” was essentially an ask for a public repudiation of Radley. I explained on X why I didn’t need to issue any apology and advised everyone to actually listen to The Fifth Column podcast, in the naïve hope that anyone who did so would clearly see that Radley was beyond fair in his characterization of their discussion. That is not how things work on social media, however, and soon, led by Foster, I was deluged with angry remarks by the podcast’s fans on X. In response to one such commenter, I listed the numerous claims of the film that the podcast had indeed swallowed.

This prompted Welch to respond with a snarky, sarcastic, gratuitously personal, fact-free attack on Radley and me in a blog post denying that they had accepted any of the claims I identified (and followed that up with a special episode for paid members to boot). This is not a performance I intend to match here.

In his post, Welch denied that they had “amplified” the film (truly straining credulity) or they had made any mistakes whatsoever in their original discussion. “I listened to it [The Fifth Column’s podcast about the documentary] again on Friday night, and with hindsight regret nothing,” he declared.

Welch’s central contention is that because they had stuck a few caveats and criticisms in an otherwise favorable 37-minute-long treatment of The Fall of Minneapolis, they somehow can’t be lumped with anyone else on the right, not even Hughes—a repeated guest on their show—or Loury and McWhorter, both of whom Foster praised profusely in the episode and whose discussion The Fifth Column closely channeled.

But the fact is that when it comes to their reactions to the documentary, there is not much daylight between any of them. The Fifth Column fell for many of the material claims in the documentary like the rest of them did. Before we get into these, let’s examine the criticisms of the documentary that Welch rehearses in his post and denounces Radley and me for ignoring.

A few, indeed, were genuine criticisms (as when Moynihan pointed out that the film failed to reveal that the producer, a former local TV anchor, was married to the former Minneapolis police union chief). But some of them were neither here nor there (as when Foster, in a meandering comment, begins by noting that “in the moment” he had “a sense that Chauvin was being, in some respects, scapegoated, and the rest of the officers as well” before finally acknowledging that the police do have “certain obligations to look after” the person in their custody).

Welch, to his credit, did at one point note that a cop pulling out his gun within the first few seconds of the encounter was “weirdly escalatory.” But one comment that Welch classified as a criticism was really a compliment that he is now repurposing to serve his revisionist narrative about his podcast. He claimed that he “criticized” the film for presenting a “cop-centric point of view.” In fact, here is the full quote showing that’s precisely what he liked about it:

It’s basically the cop point of view, the cop-centric point of view, and the thing about that is there’s a cop-centric point of view to be told about this whole story—particularly the voluntary abdication of the third precinct police station in the kind of middle section…

And then:

What it [the documentary] is very good at is showing a whole bunch of cops talking about, even now, just getting choked up talking about how screwed up that day, week, and et cetera was. They've lost, you know, 40% of their force since then. And it's very moving.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a cop-centric point of view. But it has to come from someone whose husband does not have a long rap-sheet of police brutality and demonstrates some semblance of objectivity.

Interestingly, towards the end of the segment, Welch draws attention to the difficulty of prosecuting bad cops due to qualified immunity and the “mass deference” that the police enjoy. But that was only meant to showcase his point that no matter how big a problem this might be, it didn’t apply to Chauvin’s prosecution. Remarkably, he claimed, “[M]aybe this is the case where now the pendulum is swung and it's going towards injustice in another way.”

The pendulum, however, did no such thing, as Radley has amply shown.

But Welch doesn’t stop there. He categorically denied in ALL CAPS that he or his co-hosts bought the documentary’s core claims that I listed in my above-mentioned post on X.

• Me: “They buy that Chauvin did things by the book.” Welch: “WRONG!”

• Me: “They buy it’s MRT narrative.” Welch: “NO APOSTROPHE, NO BUYING!”

• Me: “They spend a great deal of time indicting Floyd.” Welch: “WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN.”

• Me: “And they claim that on another planet not crazed by woke mobs, [C]hauvin would have been acquitted.” Welch: “THAT WAS MOYNIHAN; ALSO, IT WASN’T ANYTHING LIKE “CRAZED BY WOKE MOBS”; IT’S REASONABLE TO SUGGEST THAT THAT PARTICULAR CITY AT THAT PARTICULAR TIME WAS PRETTY HARD-PRESSED TO PRODUCE AN IMPARTIAL JURY.”

Let’s examine each of these.

“They buy that Chauvin did things by the book.” WRONG!

Well, here is Moynihan in his own words, which neither of his co-hosts challenged.

It was the first Chauvin interview [in the documentary], and the other cop, which … because of the racialization of everything, despite the fact that race wasn't actually mentioned at all, not even a single time in the court trial, that the other cop who is Black, was interviewed too and he said he didn't blame Chauvin and thought that he did everything by the book.

And then again later, he said:

… and that he was doing something that was by the book, according to other cops, according to a cop that is in jail who is not him says it was by the book. And that it's in the manual. You have to suggest, like, well, I don't know, it's kind of a hard thing to put a guy in jail for 22-odd years for what he was taught to do, if that isn't fair.

But, of course, Chauvin was not doing “what he was taught to do” as the next point decisively shows.

“They buy it’s MRT narrative.” NO APOSTROPHE, NO BUYING!

Let’s compare my misplaced apostrophe to Welch’s “no buying” whopper:

The MRT narrative refers to the documentary’s claim that the Minneapolis police bosses lied on the witness stand when they said that MRT—Maximum Restraint Technique—that Chauvin used to subdue Floyd by kneeling on his neck was not part of their training when in fact it was. This was key to Chauvin’s conviction.

But Radley proved that despite superficial similarities, what Chauvin used was materially different from MRT. And the officers who testified never said that MRT wasn’t taught—they said what Chauvin used on Floyd wasn’t taught, all of which The Fall of Minneapolis grossly misrepresented. (You can get more the details in Radley’s post, but one key difference is that the official guidance is to use MRT for no more than a couple of minutes until the person is “hobbled” with ankle braces, something that they would have immediately confirmed if they had, like Radley, simply looked at the Minneapolis Police Department manual prior to its revisions after the Floyd incident before going on air.)

However, this is what Welch had to say about MRT after viewing the documentary:

[A] huge point of contention that they bring up, and it is pretty persuasive as presented, is that the hold, the restraint that Chauvin was using was a maximal restraint technique that's taught in normal training for Minneapolis police. In fact, I think only recently has [it] been officially repudiated or discontinued by the police department. And they have shown even photos of cops … using it in the manual style guide in pictures that look exactly like how he is doing it.

Moynihan chimes in:

The one thing that is really interesting to me not dwelled upon or not even mentioned or made into an argument by the filmmakers (which I think is something that I'm absolutely stunned that the defense counsel didn't make an argument of), is when you're trying to convince people that the move that he did was what he was trained to do, and they say, no, that wasn't in the manual, the police chief says this, and then of course it cuts back to people who are, you know, actually one of which is Derek Chauvin's mother, who brings out his training manual (which, by the way, didn't look very well-thumbed, just for the record, it looked very new) and said this is his training manual, and he learned it, and it's in here. The one way of proving that is the audio from the body cam footage. They use the acronym. He says, should we do maximum restraint, what is it, MRT or something? ...

And he uses the acronym. So clearly they all know what this acronym is. Clearly they've been trained in this. It's not something you just make up. Or you would just say, throw the dude in the ground and just restrain him, put your knee on his neck. I mean, no, they're using the actual technical term for this to restrain him.

That Chauvin’s defense did not bring this up should have been a dead giveaway that perhaps this was not a good argument. And the reason it didn’t is likely that it knew that it would further draw attention to the fact that Chauvin did not, in fact, do “things by the book.”

“They spend a great deal of time indicting Floyd.” “WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN.”

(NO QUESTION MARK, WELCH? ;)

What does it mean? It means that The Fifth Column spent a great deal of airtime on Floyd’s conduct—past and present—suggesting that he was the major source, perhaps the primary source, of his fate that fatal day.

One of the things they all were impressed with in the documentary (just like Loury and McWhorter) was that it provided 15 minutes of unfiltered (though interrupted with editorial comments) bodycam footage in the lead up to Chauvin’s maneuver which, in their view, helped to put the short viral clip in context and make Chauvin’s behavior more understandable. (Bear in mind, I’m offering only a sampling of their comments. They said more than I can present here. But feel free to peruse the whole transcript.)

Moynihan: I mean, the one thing that you come away from this, I mean, it doesn't matter what the arguments are. It doesn't matter what you think of Chauvin's guilt or innocence or the response to it. I think the average person just watching that body cam footage see somebody who's really, really high, really high.

Foster: Or at least behaving very strangely.

Moynihan: Very strangely, I would say very strangely. That's the first thing. The second thing is somebody who is resisting arrest the entire way. He's not, I mean, if it is in fact true, what the jury decided that he was killed by Derek Chauvin and because of Derek Chauvin, if that is in fact true, had he not resisted arrest, he'd be alive today. Full stop.

Fine. But should resisting arrest be a death sentence?

In the same vein, Foster notes:

Yeah, in the immediate aftermath, or at least when the story first became national news, all we had was some film shot from the vantage point. And you miss all of the context, them arriving at the convenience store because they've been called because someone passed a fake bill, them going out to confront the people who were passing fake bills, and discovering George Floyd behind the wheel of a car who immediately starts behaving in a very strange way. Insisting that he doesn't want to be shot again, which apparently he was not shot by a police officer, despite the fact that he insists he was. That his mother just died, which again, it happened two years earlier. And just generally not responding in a sensible way to basic commands, like let me see your hands, for example. And immediately, as Moynihan alluded to, he's pulled out of the car, he's sitting against the wall before being taken across the street to a cruiser, and he begins talking about being unable to breathe from there, like well before they're even trying to put him into a squad car, although he complains all throughout that. He insists on being pulled out of the squad car and being laid on the ground. It's a tremendous amount of context, as you said, Moynihan, and I definitely think seeing it that way changes things.

What, exactly, does this “tremendous amount of context” change when appraising the jury’s conclusion that Chauvin put his knee on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes and that this is what killed him? (Indeed, the bodycam footage made me not more sympathetic to the cops but to Floyd who was having some kind of a panic attack at the thought of going back to the slammer. He never cussed at the cops or showed any aggression. He flailed around as he resisted being shoved into the car.)

Furthermore, Floyd’s behavior might have been strange, but it was in no way threatening and therefore really does not offer any justification for the kind of force he was subjected to.

The Fifth Column spent a fair amount of time discussing Floyd’s drug use and poor health and speculated how that might have contributed to his death. But Radley has shown that the sole cause was positional asphyxia because Chauvin’s weight restricted Floyd’s diaphragm, allowing him to take only shallow breaths that led to an accumulation of carbon dioxide in his lungs.

And they claim that on another planet not crazed by woke mobs, [C]hauvin would have been acquitted.” “THAT WAS MOYNIHAN; ALSO, IT WASN’T ANYTHING LIKE ‘CRAZED BY WOKE MOBS’; IT’S REASONABLE TO SUGGEST THAT THAT PARTICULAR CITY AT THAT PARTICULAR TIME WAS PRETTY HARD-PRESSED TO PRODUCE AN IMPARTIAL JURY.”

It was certainly Moynihan, but it’s not like any of them gave him much pushback. Indeed, just as they toyed with the idea that Floyd was more culpable in his own death than the media was willing to admit, they also entertained the documentary’s claim that Chauvin was not as culpable in killing Floyd as the media was making him out to be.

Take a listen:

Moynihan: And so if you're looking at that [evidence] objectively and you have these conflicting reports from doctors and you’re a juror, you kind of have to say, well, this is obviously not premeditated murder. I mean, there's no evidence that he got up that morning with the desire to kill somebody. And if it is something that's going to result in 23 years in prison. … I think that if you're a jury that is not tainted by all that information, it’s very difficult to do any thinking, I have to make a decision based on politics and based on what is right for the country, what is going to transpire if this is a not guilty verdict. That Target that was looted will now just be burned to the ground and every other store around it will be looted because that's the reaction to injustice is to steal sneakers and set things on fire, then, I imagine, that is having an influence. You can't prove it. But I think it's pretty obvious to suggest that it is.

And I think it's independent of all that stuff. I mean, you kind of have to acquit the guy. Right? It doesn't strike me that that's a 23-year sentence when you see the fact that they did call the EMTs, who fucked up and went to the wrong place, immediately, and that he was doing something that was by the book, according to other cops, according to a cop that is in jail who is not him says it was by the book. And that it's in the manual. You have to suggest, like, well, I don't know, it's kind of a hard thing to put a guy in jail for 22-odd years for what he was taught to do, if that isn't fair.

Foster: It does, it did feel in the moment that there was a sense that Chauvin was being, in some respects, scapegoated, and the rest of the officers as well, for a failure there. You did have this palpable sense that if this was decided the wrong way, that the city might explode. And the national attention was certainly on this…

What about Welch’s insistence that there was nothing unreasonable in suggesting “that that particular city at that particular time was hard-pressed to produce an impartial jury”? Sure. But that doesn’t prove that this jury was partial. Nor does it prove that its verdict was wrong. Using an obviously biased documentary to gloss over all these considerations and cast aspersions on the integrity of the process is ill-considered at best.

Welch claims that Radley’s “basic objection here is that we had this discussion at all” and asserts that he has no use for the “journalistic point of view” that maintains that “bad politicians and documentaries … disappear by ignoring them.” Radley can speak for himself, but, for me, the issue is not whether the question that this documentary raises about the political climate surrounding the Floyd trial should be treated as a forbidden topic. The question is whether evidentiary standards and sourcing should matter, especially to journalists. Just as Dinesh D’ Souza’s 2000 Mules is not a credible source for raising questions about the 2020 election, not all of which might be invalid, this documentary is not a credible source for raising questions about the outcome of the trial. The misinformation it injects in the body politic serves neither the cause of justice for George Floyd nor the “cop-centric view” it seeks to represent. This is a point that Loury and McWhorter still need to grapple with given their continuing insistence that they did nothing wrong in platforming this film and its makers.

At one point in the segment, The Fifth Column crew castigates major publications and federal authorities for failing to undertake a proper investigation of all the questions hanging over the trial, leaving the job to a “crowdfunded” “independent” documentary. But when Radley, a respected voice and a former colleague, provides just that service, what do they do? They go on the offensive and launch a multi-day, multi-platform, multi-post attack over half a sentence in a 3,500-word essay and a few words in a two-hour debate and ask for a “formal apology” from those of us trying to undo the damage this documentary—and the Hughes piece—are doing to the broader conversation about criminal justice reforms.

Whatever this is, it ain’t a search for truth and justice.

*The podcast is no longer on Sirius so this sentence has been corrected.

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