The New York Times, the Atlantic, and CNN have all gone Hollywood, creating documentary divisions that align with their progressive worldviews.
Why not the Wall Street Journal?
‘It’s incredible that the New York Times, managed and run by Jews, chose to report it that way. Why is there that bias?’
“We feel there should be something on our side,” says veteran filmmaker Michael Pack, the writer/director/producer of “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.”
It’s why he joined forces with the WSJ’s opinion section to create docu-shorts on topics progressive filmmakers won’t touch. First up? The Crown Heights riots.
Tragic story
On August 19, 1991, a Jewish man accidentally drove into two black children, killing young Gavin Cato. Riots broke out across the New York City neighborhood, spiking already tense relations between black and Jewish residents. Lemrick Nelson, who is black, stabbed Jewish scholar Yankel Rosenbaum to death during the three-day melee.
Then-Mayor David Dinkins did little to stop the chaos targeting the Jewish community. Sound familiar?
“’Get the Jew’: The Crown Heights Riot Revisited” takes us back to those tumultuous days. The featurette, available for free Oct. 7 via YouTube and outside the WSJ’s paywall, lets key figures from the era recall that tragic New York story.
Horribly prescient
Pack says the Crown Heights riots offered a “timely” tale for the first short out of the gate, but the project proved horribly prescient.
“We didn’t know that another Jew would be stabbed in Crown Heights weeks before we finished the film,” Pack says. “[The attacker] was shouting, ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘Do you want to die?’ The issue is different, but the anti-Semitism remains.”
“Get the Jew” recalls how the Rev. Al Sharpton played a consequential role in the riots, with critics suggesting he doused the city’s fires with rhetorical gasoline. Sharpton appears in the docu-short to explain his presence in the saga.
“He does a very good job defending his position. … He knows how to handle difficult questions,” Pack says of the MSNBC host. “It’s a cornerstone of these films. We give everybody a chance to make their case.”
The docuseries hopes to “tell stories in a straightforward manner, not to preach or advocate,” he adds.
Both sides?
Part of that story is media bias, another element that speaks to modern times. A New York Times reporter recalls the shock of learning that his employer said both sides were culpable in the chaos.
That’s not what he saw over that three-day period.
“It’s a very key part of the narrative, and it is surprising,” Pack says of the media’s coverage at the time. “In those days you would get to a phone booth and call your editor, read the story to him over the phone. [The reporter] was watching this anti-Semitic riot and the New York Times reports it as if there were both sides fighting. That’s not what was happening, as Ari Goldman, then reporter, recognized.”
“It’s incredible that The New York Times, managed and run by Jews, chose to report it that way,” he adds. “Why is there that bias? You can see that today in how they report on what Israel does versus what Hamas or Iran does.”
Another chilling note in the film? How Mayor Dinkins let the chaos rage without attempting to restore law and order, echoing the inaction by Gov. Tim Walz during the 2020 George Floyd riots.
“[Dinkins] himself isn’t anti-Semitic, but he felt, in my opinion, that politically he couldn’t act,” Pack says. The mayor eventually called in police to quell the riots, but it happened only after protesters hurled debris at both him and the chief of police during a press conference.
‘An easy sell’
Actor Tim Blake Nelson of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” fame narrates “Get the Jew.” Nelson portrayed the title character in dramatic re-enactments in Pack’s “Rickover: The Birth of Nuclear Power,” originally on PBS, now streaming on Amazon
The filmmaker thought the actor matched the material well.
“He’s very interested in politics and is an open-minded person,” Pack says of the versatile actor. “He’s been involved in causes like stopping anti-Semitism. This was an easy sell for him.
Pack says the current plan is to produce from three to six WSJ docu-shorts a year. That’s in addition to his work as head of Palladium Pictures. That new enterprise finds Pack and his son, Thomas Pack, producing feature-length documentaries that aren’t likely to come from Hollywood Inc.
The company’s WSJ alliance is only part of the big picture. The company is producing feature-length documentaries and serving as an “incubator” for “right-of-center, non-woke filmmakers.” It’s all about stories that won’t be told by mainstream filmmakers.
“The goal is to reach the center,” he adds.
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