“Why did police shoot my daddy?” I’d like to hear the rhetorical acrobatics necessary to convince anyone that this is serious journalism. And yet this kind of barely veiled propaganda has become the stock-in-trade of nearly every major institution of the American news media.

This particular example comes from a CNN hagiography of Jacob Blake, who was shot seven times during a nasty late-August tangle with three Kenosha cops, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Notably missing from CNN’s extensive coverage—which oftentimes professes to shed light on what kind man Blake is—is nearly any mention of the warrant out for his arrest for felony sexual assault against a woman who was, at the time of the alleged assault, sharing a bed with her child. (Reporters are keen to mention that Blake’s disastrous scuffle with police occurred “in front of three of his children,” but silent on the child involved here.) According to police, the August 23rd incident ensued when they responded to a call that Blake was at the home of the victim of the alleged May 3rd assault, where he was (for obvious reasons) not supposed to be.

The police officers were aware of Blake’s outstanding warrant for a violent crime when they responded to the call; it cannot be ignored in any serious report of the event, especially for its undoubted impact on the officers’ mindsets and methods in approaching the situation. And yet a search for “jacob+blake+warrant” on CNN’s website turns up as its first result “Federal law enforcement drawn deeper into Trump’s political ambitions” (which contains no mention of the warrant), followed by “Naomi Osaka wears mask honoring Breonna Taylor before winning US Open match” (same thing).