Imagery Perpetuating Public Bias

With the news breaking recently about Andrew Weissman, top prosecuting attorney under Robert Mueller, I've been provided an education as to how people's biases are both created and perpetuated in today's mass media world.

Before this news broke about Weissman's quitting the special prosecutor's team as its lead lawyer, I was reading the best seller by Sydney Powell - former federal prosecutor under nine U.S. attorneys from both political parties over ten years and three districts - self-published book "License to Lie" which came out in 2014.

The following is off the back of the paperback I'm currently reading:

This true legal thriller debunks everything the media and the government told us about the destruction of the venerable accounting firm Arthur Andersen, Merrill Lynch executives who did one business transaction with Enron, the prosecution of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, and more. The common thread through it all is a cabal of narcissistic federal prosecutors who broke all the rules and rose to great power. Still in the news today - Robert Mueller's "pitbull" Andrew Weissman and other members of Obama's inner circle - are wreaking havoc on our Republic. This is the book that began exposing "the Deep State."

To those who lived through the media buzz of the Enron, Arthur Andersen, and Merrill Lynch scandal and trials, the impression given about those lawyers prosecuting those involved most likely formed a favorable impression, but more specifically Andrew Weissman, for pursuing justice against those responsible for one of the biggest scandals of the early 2000s.

However, what the media most likely de-emphasized about Weissman is how he sent a man from Merrill Lynch to prison, who later was proven to be totally innocent of the charges Weissman and his team of lawyers had aggressively brought against him in court.

Today's news is a perfect illustration of how reporters perpetuate a bias - by both the report and the reader - created from his earlier reputation as being a pillar of virtue in the legal circles of Washington, D.C., especially when any remarks of opposition to his reputation is ever mentioned. Here's a few lines which does just that from a recent NPR report:

Weissmann has borne the brunt of attacks from critics such as Rush Limbaugh and conservative legal interest groups.

They cited his [Weissman's] attendance at Hillary Clinton's election night party in 2016 and a positive email he wrote to former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she refused to defend the Trump administration's first Muslim travel ban.

What makes this article even more obviously biased - thus perpetuating the public's consumption of the narrative about Weissman - is the following remarks:

Former Enron prosecutor Kathryn Ruemmler said there's a reason for the attacks on Weissmann.

"Andrew is attacked because he is feared; those under investigation know just how effective he is," Ruemmler said. "He has not only peerless technical skills, but the fearlessness necessary for pursuing high profile, complex cases and a passionate commitment to seeing justice is done."

In Licensed to Lie, Kathryn Ruemmler is revealed as one of Weissaman's team members in the Enron, Arthur Andersen, and Merrill Lynch cases in which 25,000 employees of Arthur Andersen lost their jobs overnight due the indictment against of Arthur Andersen. As a former assistant attorney under Weissman in the past, it's no surprise that Ruemmler would support Weissman and provide a glowing description while defending and maintaining his public reputation.In fact, she and her other team members deliberately withheld exculpatory evidence which would have proven those they convicted and sent to prison were actually innocent of the charges.

Bolstering my assertion, one need only to read an article of Sara Carter's; an investigative reporter who's researched Weissman's unorthodox methods and procedures in prosecuting his targets.

Weissmann, however, has not been without criticism. This reporter has written numerous stories on Weissmann’s tactics.

For example, in 1997 Weissmann was officially reprimanded by a judge in the Eastern District of New York for withholding evidence. Weissmann was also reported to the Department of Justice Inspector General and Senate Judiciary Committee in 2016 for alleged “corrupt legal practices,” according to documents and the attorney involved in a whistleblower case.

The reader of Carter's article will note that the last two paragraphs refer to Sidney Powell's book I've mentioned above, and what Powell claims about Weissman's prosecutorial misconduct from her personal experience in getting his convictions reversed and Jim Brown of Merrill Lynch freed.

Anyone paying detailed attention to the current prosecution of Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, and now Roger Stone, will understand the kinds of methods and procedures, such as a "process crimes" - entrapping a person's testimony which results in a technicality and thus resulting in an unintended lie - have been enough to convict them for lying in a federal case to prosecutors. And we all know Cohen and Manafort  have now been sentenced to prison, not for any "Russian Collusion", but whatever they could dig up through entrapment.

So, in understanding how images of individuals can be manipulated through ignorance of the general public's view of them through using favorable information, as well as  omission about unfavorable realities, can generate biases that are perpetuated.