Media cop out.(Beat the Press)

Nothing spices up the 6 o'clock news better than flailing rubber clubs. Every time I see a grainy videotape of some cops whuppin' up on somebody with riot batons--it's almost an iconic image at this point--I want to scream, "Hey! Back up the tape. Hit rewind!" Because something tells me the cops didn't just drive up and say, "Hey, look, a black man, let's beat him up."

The latest bit of ring-around-the-suspect footage comes from Cincinnati, where Nathaniel Jones, a black man, died after a beating by either two cops or six cops. I watched the tape and saw only two cops using billy clubs, although the media kept saying it was six cops. I have to assume there were six cops present on the scene, but only two tried to subdue him with force. That must fall under the category of details too minor to report.

Also considered a minor detail was the fact that Nathaniel Jones was high on PCP. The fact that Nathanial Jones was also stoked on another heart weakening stimulant, cocaine. That Nathaniel Jones had methanol in his body. (Yes, you can smoke that, too.) That Nathaniel Jones weighed 350 pounds. That Nathaniel Jones had a bad heart. That Nathaniel Jones attacked a cop.

The only reason the cops were there in the first place is that Jones had been unruly with the paramedics who showed up to save his life. (He was passed out on the lawn in front of a White Castle hamburger joint.)

And if all that weren't enough, you would think this one fact would be emphasized: Nathaniel Jones had no internal injuries from the beating. In other words, the cops hit him exactly where they're supposed to hit a suspect struggling to resisting arrest.

It took three to four days to get most of this information into the news mill, and by that time it was buried on page 16C.

The initial coverage was all on the order of "Cincinnati Cops Kill Another Black Man, City Uneasy"--implying a connection between the Timothy Thomas case, where white cops shot a black man and which set off three days of rioting in 2001, and the Nathaniel Jones case. Since the incidents bear no resemblance to each other, and since the police tape clearly shows Jones lunging at a cop and resisting arrest, the ...