I know Channel 5’s Karin Johnson a bit, I used to see her more around town, especially during the Lakota Levy days and I can say that I have liked her. But I was more than a little enraged by her actions in helping blow on the flames of discontent while covering the riots down in Cincinnati when those protests turned north and flowed over into West Chester. Watching Channel 5’s coverage it was obvious that they were trying to fan the flames of a mob into creating a news story in Cincinnati’s suburbs that they expected to take off and become a national story, and it was just shameful. I expect a lot more out of her personally. I will say this to her and to Channel 5 as an organization, if those protestors come up out of the I-275 loop and start bringing the Black Lives Matter crowd with their Antifa anarchists into the streets of suburbia and those kids end up getting hurt because of it, the blame is on them for provoking it with the promise of news coverage. If she had just reported the news as it happened that would be one thing, but Karin, like many of these reporters across the country are trying to make names for themselves by helping create the news, by blowing on the flames to spread the fire, and that’s very bad.

Once the protestors did arrive in West Chester around 6 PM at the clock tower Helena Battipaglia from the same station, WLWT as Karin, the way they covered the story was no different than a couple of campers blowing on a campfire trying to get wet wood to ignite into a bonfire. It was sick to see such a small-minded effort applied to the very good community of West Chester, where there is great diversity and opportunity for all who want it applied to a considerable population of people. West Chester is not blue state territory, it is well managed by very gifted politicians and is a very small government for its size of community. To see outside agitators come in and try to start trouble was very menacing, and provocative. It was an insult. And in response, the trustees had to impose for the next month curfews which will further restrict businesses trying to recover from Covid-19. And the agitators were not the protestors, they were the media starving for a story—”protestors move into West Chester!”

Then to make matters worse, the West Chester police chief kneeled before the protestors, bending the knee and empowering the flames that sent them their in the first place. You don’t bend the knee to protestors. With Karin reporting her story as the protestors being “peaceful,” that is a very naive position. The protestors in Minneapolis were peaceful at first too, but once they pushed the limits of the law just a little bit, and they saw no arrests or consequences, they turned up the aggression to looting and violence. In cities like Cincinnati where the overhaul of Over-the-Rhine is essentially lipstick on a pig, the real underbelly of crime and bad conduct is still there, the same passivity that ruined downtown is still alive, and has allowed protestors to be more embolden than they deserve. But people moved away from the cities for a reason, and if that garbage comes to people’s front porches, then there will be trouble. It has nothing to do with racism, there are many diverse people who live in the suburbs, and they own lots of guns and everyone gets along pretty well together. But bad behavior is what comes with these protestors and nobody wants that in West Chester.

It is reckless and irresponsible actions, by the media in this case, to inspire a bunch of bored protestors looking for something to do, to be a part of, and to exploit them to perpetuate violence and disruption in a neighborhood not even remotely guilty of the kind of sins the protestors are protesting. The chants the protestors brought with them are not peaceful, they are part of the Black Lives Matter national aggression campaign, and when West Chester Police are kneeling before them, surrendering before the fight even started, it was to appease the mob before it turned ugly. Karin and her reporter friends would like to think that they brought people together, that their spin on the story helped ease tensions, and inspired police chiefs to kneel to the applause of the protestors. We don’t pay police chiefs a lot of money to kneel before threats to our security. And it was in that moment of weakness that the West Chester Trustees tried to take the edge off by voting for a curfew to take away the temptation of violence. Again, the business owners and residents who want to enjoy their lives have been disrupted by government mismanagement. These protestors made their announcement after a successful campaign down the highway in Cincinnati. They pushed the police chief there to bend the knee, so they felt empowered, and Karin Johnson was there to give them time on camera and a microphone in their faces for their next potential victory. So they picked West Chester to send a real message. And now more business closures are the result, more misery, more panic, and police who turned yellow at the first sign of trouble.

I was greatly relieved later the next day to see that Sheriff Jones of Butler County reported to reporters that he would not bend the knee. Rightfully, he expressed the rights of protestors, but indicated that he wasn’t going to kneel before anybody. That is the right thing to do, you don’t apologize for things you are not guilty of just so that mobs don’t loot your stores and beat up innocent people, and that is what is meant behind the threat of the protests. Protests are fine until they cross the line, and once they impede people’s rights to live, blocking highways, shutting down businesses, and forcing people into a defensive state, they have gone too far. If Jones hadn’t taken that position in Butler County, then more protestors would be emboldened from the mistakes made in West Chester by their police chief. Its one thing to let people practice free speech, its quite another to put your arm around them and hope they remain peaceful because they have reputations of violence. To make peace with an aggressor shows weakness, and that’s when things do turn worse.

It is not a hard argument, if Channel 5 had not been stroking the fires of discontent, it is highly unlikely those protestors would have traveled north into West Chester. This is not unusual to just Cincinnati, this has been happening all across the country. But I do expect more out of Karin Johnson. I understand trying to get a story and I know the activist side of her. She has always been a school levy supporter and I have always been against higher taxes, so it was always hard to get a fair story out of Channel 5, or any of the mainstreamers for that matter. But this even was way over the top, they drove the story, they didn’t just report it. And because of that, they made the world a much worse place, and they own what happens next.

Cliffhanger the Overmanwarrior

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