National Media's Refusal to Cover White Couple's Murder Suggests PC at Work

NewsBusters ^ | Matthew Sheffield

[RatherBiased.com]

The sudden force that the liberal press brought to bear on the falsely accused Duke lacrosse team has been curiously absent on a much more grisly crime committed against a white couple by a group of black youths.

Personally, I don't think that local crime issues should ever be covered in the national press but if the media are going to cover them, they need to be consistent. My friend La Shawn Barber has a must-read post on the matter:

Early this year, a white couple was carjacked, tortured, raped, and murdered by a group of black thugs. Christopher Newsom (23) was gang-raped, shot and set on fire. There are unconfirmed reports that the killers cut off his penis while he was still alive. The going-to-straight-to-hell murderers made Channon Christian (21) watch, and then they gang-raped her over four days and left her to die. There are unconfirmed reports that her breasts were cut off while she was still alive. (Also see this story and the Wikipedia entry)

I’ve been getting e-mail about this case since it happened, but I’ve been hesitant to blog about it. Flopping Aces

published a big post about the case last night, which probably accounts for why I received a few more Christian-Newsom e-mails this morning. Here goes!

I’ve noticed that mainstream media are reluctant to report this story, especially when it first happened. In light of the blanket coverage the Duke “rape” case received, the paucity of coverage in this case seems a bit unbalanced. I mean, isn’t the brutal, black-on-white gang-rape, mutilation, and murder of two people more than or at least as newsworthy as a white-on-black gang-rape (which obviously was phony)? Even if the stripper’s allegations had been true, why was the Duke case burning up the airwaves while the Christian-Newsom case barely emits a spark?

What’s up with the lack of blanket media coverage? I’m not talking about a story here or there with case updates. The media should be swarming around this story. What happened to Christian and Newsom should be all over the airwaves and printing presses.

Read the rest.

Update 10:10. La Shawn's theory is interesting and seems true to me to a certain extent. However the media's coverage of race is tough to characterize because the same national press that is refusing to cover this story is also the same media that obssesses over missing white women to the exclusion of women of any other race. It also seems true that the press is more likely to show pictures of criminals if they are black than if they're white.

What to make of all this? My preliminary theory is that the media at both the local and national levels is more interested in the white audience than the black one. That makes sense from an economics point of view considering there are more whites than blacks in America. Accordingly, the media are more likely to tailor news coverage to white viewers. This explains why you continue to see "news" stories about cold cases such as Natalee Holloway or JonBenet Ramsey and are more likely to see pictorial coverage of black criminals than white ones.

Things change at the national level, however, because there is an added component--political correctness. The national press is more liberal than most local media outlets. In the guilty liberal worldview, it's wrong to promote stories about minority criminality. This explains why the Duke "rape" case was so extensively covered and the lacrosse team not afforded any presumption of innocence and why stories of black hate crimes are underreported. The same thing happens often in coverage of crimes committed by Islamic young people being blamed on "youths" that Charles Johnson is so adept at pointing out.

[JLGALT]

The other day I read FBI statistics that said “although black males represent only 6.5% of the population they represent 70% of the shootings”!

[Plains Drifter]

Part of the grizzly revolting details of this crime with pictures of the suspects and victims can be found under the crime section on Snopes.com. I read the details of this car jacking in Knoxville, Tennessee and it’s not for the weak of stomach.

[3AngelaD]

Don’t you know that it’s not a race crime if the victims are white?

[RatherBiased.com]

Absolutely. However, considering how gruesome the story is, it’s the perfect sensational bit for Nancy Grace and friends.

Yet, the media aren’t talking about it.

[3AngelaD]

From another report, and Poynter is supposed to be setting the standards for journalism:

"Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute -- a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla. -- told Cybercast News Service on Monday that just because a crime involves black perpetrators and white victims "doesn't mean it's a hate crime. You have to have specific evidence, such as some sort of racial epithet," which was the case in the Byrd murder.

The Knoxville double homicide "sounds like a horrible, heinous crime, but horrible, heinous crimes are not the standard for what become national stories," she said.

One reason the networks haven't run this story "is because they can't fit it into a narrative of anything other than shock and horror, and you can find that in any crime story anywhere."..."

[MeanWestTexan]

Snopes:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/newsom.asp

Good account, but typical snopes pandering to liberalism. (I’ve disliked snopes ever since they set out to lie for Jon Carey.)

[Plains Drifter]

It’s like they say, if it happens to a white it ain’t a crime.

I’ve emailed this story to Fox News and Glenn Beck and I thank God every day for the internet because we can keep these stories out there. Does anyone remember the Kansas City massacre about 15 years ago?

[sgtbono2002]

Lets not forget the weak sentences handed out to the people who beat those white girls in California.

Now they want to make it a hate crime to call a Spade a Spade. Free Speech is being stifled by a proposed hate crime bill now before Congress.

[Badeye]

“The other day I read FBI statistics that said “although black males represent only 6.5% of the population they represent 70% of the shootings”!”

And its been that way for the past two decades, despite drops in overall crime rates.

Its why Jesse Jackson is famously ‘relieved’ when a gang of youths coming up behind him are white, rather than black.

[MANO]

I hope this gets the attention that it deserves.

[I still care]

I will play a touch of the devil’s advocate here in that I have noticed that really grisly, horrifying murders do get slightly less coverage, unless it’s a serial killer.

The press tends to like sexual murders or murders that involve a betrayal or disappearance. They like the mystery and sexual titillation. If they victim is pretty, cute, or a child. Simple strangulations with maybe one horrifying detail.

The really gross ones do not get covered in detail, it’s almost like people watch them for entertainment, but they don’t want to be too grossed out.

After making this argument I will agree that the press protects minority killers.

[Plains Drifter]

Partner, I’ve never been to Snopes before I heard about this story. I just wanted to check the sources and the validity before I started emailing and calling my friends because I knew the MSM would do its best to ignore the story. I got my original information from the internet and thanks for posting their website.

[LWalk18]

I think that comparing this case to the Duke case is a faulty analogy- with Duke, you had attactive students at top university accused of a crime. There was also an element of mystery- did the crime occur or not? Once it was obvious that no rape had occurred, you have the issue of judicial conduct.

Here, there is absolutely no question that this brutal attack, rape and murder occurred. To me this case compares to what happened in Jasper, TX or the Matthew Shepard case, both of which got plenty of national media while this case has not.

[Gil4]

I hate to be the one throwing cold water, but the accused in this case are not members of an athletic team for a major university.

We heard about the Duke lacrosse team case because of the connection to the Duke athletic program. If it was about a few high school drop-outs, we probably wouldn’t have heard about it. (The race element certainly give it more legs.)

When a couple of basketball players from UConn stole some laptops, we heard about it. When Marcus Vick was in and out of trouble, we heard about it.

I suppose the mainstream media might have reported this story if the races of those involved were all reversed, but I don’t know that for sure.

Comparing this to the Duke case is apples to oranges. You may have a case to make, but the Duke comparison doesn’t help it.

[CeasarsGhost]

Whatever stories tend to rip the fabric of society apart the most, (pitting whites against blacks, women against men and homosexual perverts against normal people are their favorites), are the ones that the media wallow in. The leftist media love to stir the racial pot, but must also cover up many black crimes to prevent blacks from claiming that they cover black crime unevenly, thereby showing the media are not PC. Glossing over islamic terrorist acts in America, (by largely ignoring references to the perpetrator's religious beliefs), simply indicates political correctness and cowardice. (The most recent such terror act was the slaughter at Virginia Tech, where the killer found it necessary to display "Ismail ax" on his arm and elsewhere). The coverage of missing white women seems to hold the female population rapt and sells lots of commercial time.

To sum up, the media will saturate the public with whatever disturbs the collective soul, but will temper relevent facts that would tend to make them appear 'intolerant' and un-pc. Keep in mind that 'tolerance' and 'political correctness' are two things that help destroy society, so the leftists must march to their own drumbeat like the promenading pimps they are.

[Osage Orange]

There was a horrible black on white multiple murder case in Wichita, KS...a few years back.

Hardly a peep out of the DBM/MSM clymers........

[MeanWestTexan]

Oh, I know you weren’t endorsing Snopes -— I just hunted down the link for the same reason you did.

Snopes is generally OK, but they always throw in liberal pandering B.S. into their articles.

[Brilliant]

Blacks murdering whites is not news.