Media, Society

Washington Post Reporter Dismisses Shoplifting Stories as the “Panic” of “a Sticky-Fingered Nation Built on Stolen Land”

Washington Post writer Maura Judkis is under fire this week for a column in which she mocks shoplifting stories as the “moral panic” of a nation built on “stolen land.” It is reminiscent of those who excused rioting in past summers “as an expression of power” and demanded that the media refer to looters as “protesters.” Now, the Washington Post is suggesting that it may be just desserts for a nation of colonizers and enslavers.

The prior day, the Post ran another column downplaying accounts of stores closing due to shoplifting even though employees blamed rampant shoplifting in San Francisco.  There have been increasing store closures where the owners have cited the problem of rising crimes. Indeed, in D.C., I recently spoke with the owner of a popular restaurant who is closing because of the rampant crime threatening his customers and employees.

In cities like New York and Washington, consumers are now faced with locked away merchandise requiring an employee to assist in obtaining items. Stores did not take that extreme action because shoplifting is a myth or exaggerated.

Judkis wrote a Friday piece entitled “The zombie CVS, a late-capitalism horror story.” The hook was another store being looted in D.C. Judkis matter-of-factly describes how

“Everything else that remains in the store in Northwest D.C., which is not much, is under plexiglass: Dawn dish soap, L’Oreal shampoo, MiraLax, a handful of Clairol root touch-up hair dye kits, flu season combo packs of DayQuil and NyQuil. The diapers are behind the counter. The Cetaphil and Neutrogena face washes are under lock and key. Other shelves, stretching entire aisles, are totally empty. “

The reason for those extreme measures is brushed over. Instead, Judkis uses the story to mock such coverage as “a horror story of Late Capitalism” in which “the empty CVS had somehow become a stand-in for all that is wrong with American cities — and liberals (and liberal democracy?) — in 2024.”

She then adds “America is a sticky-fingered nation built on stolen land, and its current moral panic is about shoplifting. It’s not just a worry in Columbia Heights. All over the country, from sea to shining CVS, there are concerns about petty theft.”

She dismisses the shoplifting as a “political talking point” despite many stories citing such crime as the reason for closing stories in various cities.  She questions the real basis for such moves and claims that “in certain conservative circles, there’s a wild narrative about cities as terrifying hellholes of crime, theft and lawlessness. The bleakness of the D.C. CVS played right into this belief.”

The real story, she suggests, is the economic conditions leading to shoplifting.

Other journalists have made similar objections. New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism Professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones, has called upon journalists to stop covering shoplifting crimes, even criticizing MSNBC’s Al Sharpton for his discussion of a viral video of a man who recently stole steaks from a New York City Trader Joe’s.

Writers like Hannah-Jones believe that reporters should actively suppress or dismiss stories on such crime to frame public opinion. It is all part of advocacy journalism. You can almost attribute the denial of reality to “a late-journalism horror story.”

134 thoughts on “Washington Post Reporter Dismisses Shoplifting Stories as the “Panic” of “a Sticky-Fingered Nation Built on Stolen Land””

  1. Is it a coincidence that the woman belittling concerns about theft at retail stores happens to work for the guy that owns AMAZON, the biggest winner of forced store closures?

    Hey lady, how does it feel to be helping the second richest man in the country close stores in poor communities?

  2. There is no such thing as “advocacy journalism.” Advocacy is the antithesis of journalism, so those engaging in what they term “advocacy journalism” are simply engaging in advocacy, not journalism. To categorize Judkis, Hannah-Jones, and their ilk as “journalists” is giving them far more credit than is warranted.

    2. There is no such thing as “advocacy journalism.” — Anon

      We agree. The word they are looking for to describe themselves is propagandist.

    3. Whoa – finally someone who understands these advocacy idiots are one of the reasons newspapers are failing..

    1. With the various people who have testified – and more to come, What is certain is that the Biden’s are lying,
      They contradict each other – often under oath, and there is zero possibility that all of which each says is true.

      I would further note that if you beleive that Joe and James are telling the truth atleast some of the time,
      Then you have absolute incontrovertable proof that Joe is part of the influence peddling scheme – and was while he was VP.
      Pedaling the influence of someone in public office is called soliciting bribes.

  5. The Obama administration said journalist know nothing. That is why the could so easily.

    These people with platforms are ignorant of history to an alarming degree.
    As noted repeatedly on this thread, there are no original owners of any land on the planet. Control of those lands has always been fluid.
    This particular writer ignores, or is completely ignorant that history even exists prior to 1700.

    As far as the current crime wave. Again, the writer has never heard of the Great Depression or WWII where millions endured a terrible economy, and then rationing. Through all that, from the 1930’s until 1945 there was no crime wave, despite the lack of goods.

    1. The claim that poverty causes crime is ancient, it is atleast part of the theme of Les Miserables and much of Dickens work.
      The problem is that it is not true.

      The bottom quintile in the US lives batter than the top 1% for 99.99% of human existance.

      Further there is ample evidence that if you start in the bottom quintile and make good choices – even if you are not top[ of your class, you will end up in the middle class.
      Finish school.
      Do not commit crimes.
      Do not become sexually active until you are adult.
      Get a job – even a $hitty one
      Keep that job until you can get a better one.
      Do not have children before you are married.
      Do not get married until you are able to support a family.

      You do not even have to get all of these right – just most of them.

      1. John, I have that exact same list.
        My dad set those expectation for all of us kids. I set those expectations for our kids. Along with hundreds of little things. Look everyone in the eye. Speak clear, honor your word, respect all.

        I remember Bill Cosby told Blacks to learn the Queens English and dump the ghetto crap language.

        All of this advice cost nothing.

  6. We have all heard of fat-shaming, so me add a new word to the lexicon! FACT-shaming!

    It is what you do to ease the discomfort caused by cognitive dissonance, which arises when what you see, or don’t see, conflicts with your belief system.

    Something like this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uV47LWHr5I

    Conflicts with Das Narrative that black people are victims of white oppression. So, the story gets to changed to, the looting is not looting after all – it is a reaction to systemic oppression! Even better, just don’t cover the story at all. And yeah, the “oppressed folks in that video do look starved and emaciated, don’t they.

    1. I think it helpful to add a bit of history to the cognitive dissonance stuff. This is an excerpt, and there is more at the link.

      “Festinger, Riecken and Schachter were already studying the effects of prophecy disconfirmation on groups of believers, when they read a story in a local newspaper headlined “Prophecy from Planet. Clarion Call to City: Flee That Flood. It’ll Swamp us on Dec. 21” The prophecy came from Dorothy Martin (1900–1992), a Chicago housewife who practised automatic writing[]

      Martin claimed to be receiving messages from superior beings from a planet she referred to as Clarion. These messages included a prophecy that Lake City and large portions of the United States, Canada, Central America and Europe would be destroyed by a flood before dawn on December 21, 1954. Through the restrained recruitment activities of Charles Laughead (a college doctor in Michigan) and other acquaintances, Martin was supported in her mediumship by a small group of believers. Some of the believers took significant actions that indicated a high degree of commitment to the prophecy. Some left or lost their jobs, neglected or ended their studies, ended relationships and friendships with non-believers, gave away money and/or disposed of possessions to prepare for their departure on a flying saucer, which they believed would rescue them and others in advance of the flood.

      As anticipated by the research team, the prophesied date passed with no sign of the predicted flood, causing a dissonance between the group’s commitment to the prophecy and the unfolding reality. Different members of the group reacted in different ways. Many of those with the highest levels of belief, commitment and social support became more committed to their beliefs, began to court publicity in a way they had not before, and developed various rationalizations for the absence of the flood.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails#Study
      ————–
      The takeaway point is this, “Many of those with the highest levels of belief, commitment and social support became more committed to their beliefs [] and developed various rationalizations for the absence of the flood.

      That is what Judkis is doing, IMHO. If not from her own beliefs, then to give the “true believers” on the Democrat/Left a good cover story, to help keep them from walking away from the Party.

      1. Cognative disonance causes those who operate on beleif rather that facts to either more deeply entrench their beleifs or at some point flip to an often radically different beleif system.

        Unfortunately it rarely causes people to revert to critical thinking.

        1. Sad, but true. Cognitive dissonance is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. Humans should feel uncomfortable when Reality disconfirms what they believe. It simply means that they are wrong about a thing, and gee, Welcome to the Human Race! What you do, then, is you adjust your beliefs to conform with Reality. But what you said – it rarely causes people to revert to critical thinking. Particularly on political issues. But it does happen. I watch a lot of those #walkaway videos, and most of the ones who leave the Democrats, it is because they could simply no longer personally reconcile what they saw, with what they had been told. I do not think I have seen one where superior argumentation caused them to change. Before that could happen, they had to start having doubts about it themselves, then superior argumentation could be actually “heard”, and seal the deal. I do think it is possible to plant some seeds of doubt, and hopefully, they will sprout. On cognitive dissonance, this is a good story:

          https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/12/the-christmas-the-aliens-didnt-come/421122/

  7. Maura Judkis has a net worth of 1.8 million, why hasn’t she bought some homes for injuns and help alleviate the unbelievable historic burden ? After all, she has greatly benefitted, being white, having a privileged job beyond belief at one of two top national newspapers, her mother is a professor, more privilege, she really needs to cut that 1.8 million down to 5 grand and give the rest to the downtrodden.

  8. The “native” Americans and successive waves stole the land from indigenous Americans. All’s fair in lust and abortion? Perhaps an ethnic Spring to balance the scales of diversity (i.e. color judgment, class bigotry) and progress.

    1. There have been waves of migration into the americas every 10,000 years since 30,000 years ago, with each wave dsiplacing or even killing off the last.
      Europeans are merely the most recent wave – and the only one to come from Europe rather than asia.

  9. Darren Smith, which URL, and from where, does the blog need, in very simple terms, to post a YouTube video?

    I’ve tried five times with various URLs.

    1. George,

      I didn’t see anything in the filters for your username. I remember several days ago (maybe more than a week) I found a couple youtube links you posted were trapped by the spam filter but I restored them.

      Generally there have been only three issues I can think offhand that led to problems

      1) Posted more than two links, triggering spam filter.
      2) Posted a link to bitchute.com which unfortunately has an artifact where the first five letters of the domain name match that of a profanity filter item, so we have to manually approve the comment.
      3) There have been issues with hyperlinks to youtube not displaying an embedded view, that is rather than a link it instead displays the full video itself embedded within the comment. One of the commenters here discovered why this was happening but I don’t remember the exact way that the embedded version can be displayed always. I know that the shortlink version (i.e. youtu.be/?asdfasd) of youtube video URLs will not cause the system to embed the video and will just leave it as a link.

      I might recommend that you use a fully qualified youtube.com link for those videos and no modifiers after the ../watch?v=SomeRandomCamelCasedValUE .

      i haven’t seen anything from your username recently. So sorry but that’s all I can offer so far.

    2. George, To make a Video Post
      1. Write a short sentence (Must have some ‘Leading Text’, it can only be a short Paragraph)
      2. Then ‘Return’ for a new line, but be sure not to put a space in front of the YouTube URL, and do not follow it (the URL) with a Space (No space before the URL and No Space after the URL)
      3. the YouTube URL must be on the last line of the Post, because no Text can follow the URL.
      It only works for YouTube Videos. Other Types you must use a Hyperlink to the Video.

      Note: I think your experience maybe because you had to much ‘leading text’. WordPress only allows a limited amount of post real estate (room for a post).

      1. A little paragraph of Text. Blob-Biddy, Blah, Blah, Blah, …
        Ah-Ha, Um-Hum, yep, yep. yep …
        Maybe a Blank-Space before the URL here. The Next Line is the URL: No Space Before the URL or After the URL.

  10. From The WaPo Column:

    “First, there are the economic factors triggering human need: joblessness, inflation, a slow recovery from the pandemic.”
    …………………………………

    Apparently the author of this piece is a conservative who thinks the economy is in recession despite record-low unemployment. It’s funny how Trump-sympathizers are embedded at the Washington Post.

  11. Stolen Land? Tell me when this “journolist” deeds her condo or home to some Native American for free.

  13. Tucker just interviewed a Brazil Rep who has been attacked and fled Brazil or whatever since Biden and China commies took over Brazil and the lawfare is rampant there, and as we see it is becoming bad here fast.
    This grey lady excuse piece is just another notch in communism’s belt slapping the USA in the face.

    Watch out big shots, they’re after number one right in your faces and that means none of you are safe.

    https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1763337098705162548

    Learn how quickly the communist fists clench around your throats.

  14. And they wonder why permitless concealed carry is becoming popular in so many states.

    1. Infringement is comprised of permits, registration, licensing, ammunition restrictions, concealed carry, etc.

      The only thing an American citizen needs is the arm which the Constitution allows him to keep and bear, excluding any further restrictions or limitations.

      American fundamental law is written in simple and understandable words of the English language; citizens who speak English do not need “interpretation.”

      The singular American failure is the judicial branch, emphasis on the Supreme Court.

      Unconstitutional limitations and restrictions on the keeping and bearing of arms must have been struck down immediately when introduced.

      Limitations and restrictions should have never been considered or proposed.
      ___________________________________________________________________________________

      2nd Amendment

      A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

  15. “IT DOESN’T WORK IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE”
    ________________________________________________

    “We’ve been waitin’ for you, Caroline.”

    “Waitin’ for you to believe.”

    “It doesn’t work if you don’t believe.”

    – Violet, The Skeleton Key
    _____________________________

    Irrational, incoherent, antithetical, and unconstitutional communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs) have been waiting for allegiant and constitutional Americans to believe. 

  16. Maura Judkis has a BA in journalism and that should tell you everything you need to know about her.

    I hear that the 6th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual will finally have an entry for ‘Journalism Degree’ as a species of mental illness.

    It will explain much, including why the NYT and WaPo remind so many of us of asylums in need of locks, bars and nurses with big syringes.

    1. I should add that decades ago I took a journalism course taught by a crusty older guy who had learned his craft by doing it and working his way up. I am not even sure he had a degree but if he did it didn’t harm him. He made us write sample stories that lead with the lede and who, what, when, where and why. He was an absolutist on accuracy, honesty, clarity, grammar and the rest of the tradecraft. If he had political or ideological views I never heard them. He was all in on perfection of his craft. I was all in admiring him as one of the best instructors I ever had. I learned some about writing and a lot about trade ethics. The profession seems to have abandoned everything that made that man so worthy of respect and is now turning out folks who are indistinguishable from the genuinely mentally ill.

  17. All lands have been fought over since the beginning of mankind. Only people pushing this woke nonsense are the Sheep indoctrinated by the Marxists like the Obamaites. To the victor go the spoils as they write their version of history. Long juicers are not going to allow it to happen!

  18. I live in a city under siege, San Francisco. Daily looting is widespread. Nightly burglaries of businesses. Little to no police response. I can promise much of it organized gangs. Same with car break-ins, commercial burglary. City authorities do not care, in the least.

    1. The FBI could stop the organized crime, right now, if they wanted to.
      Obviously ‘the powers that be’ want it to continue. Or they would stop it.

      The FBI is a domestic terror organization.
      Make no mistake.
      The FBI is now operating as the American Stasi.

  20. Who does this line of BS work on? AWFLs? alphabet people?

    Coming off articles like: “Doritos is Developing Lady-Friendly Chips Because You Should Never Hear a Woman Crunch”,”Pumpkin Spice Life” does anyone take these people serious? JFC.

    Here’s her personal stuff: In 2013, Judkis married Scott Gilmore, a lawyer. (naturally – apparently Mrs Judkis can’t cook, so she serves up appetizing zingers at dinner parties for her like-minded crowd of morons). They have two adopted dogs – Milky, a white Coton de Tulear mix, and Milou (apparently Milou is white, otherwise we would know its breed). The dogs have received consultations from a specialist for their problematic behavior, an experience Judkis compared to therapy.(I imagine the poor doggies would need plenty of therapy being raised by dolts like the judkis’s) During the COVID-19 pandemic Judkis allowed her hair to go grey, a decision made by other women, and a change she embraced. (No surprise judkis keeps up with the coven).

Comments are closed.