Posted on 05/18/2007 1:07:46 PM PDT by FeeinTennessee
Racially Charged Murder Trials Getting Scant National Press By Randy Hall CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor May 18, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - A judge in Knox County, Tenn., Thursday scheduled separate trials during the summer of 2008 for four defendants charged with the carjacking, rape and murder of a young couple even as the case of black-on-white crime remained mostly untouched by the national media.
Letalvis Cobbins, 24, and 25-year-old Lemaricus Davidson were slated to go on trial May 12 and June 16, 2008, regarding 46 charges including first degree murder, kidnapping and rape regarding the deaths of 21-year-old Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, 23, in early January.
Judge Richard Baumgartner also set July 14, 2008, as the trial date for 18-year-old Vanessa Coleman, who faces 40 state charges connected to the crimes, and August 11, 2008, as the date George Thomas, 24, will be tried on 46 charges in the case.
While more than a dozen family members and friends of the victims sat in the courtroom Thursday, Baumgartner said he expected each trial to last about two weeks.
Also on Thursday, Knox County District Attorney General Randy Nichols stated that he has not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty if the defendants are convicted.
Reports on the latest developments in the case quickly filtered out through the local news media, including television station WATE, Channel 6 in Knoxville.
Jamie Foster, the station's news director, told Cybercast News Service on Thursday: "Most of the people in the area were obviously very upset by this crime."
As Cybercast News Service previously reported, Christian and Newsom were out on a dinner date in Knoxville on January 6 when they were carjacked, kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered.
According to published news reports, the two were tortured at length in each other's presence, strangled and shot. Newsom's mutilated and burned remains were found along a railroad track the following day. Two days later, Christian's battered and burned body was found in a trash bin.
"Let's face it," Foster said. "It was a very brutal crime."
The suspects were quickly arrested and charged with numerous offenses including carjacking, kidnapping, rape, premeditated murder, theft and robbery.
"People want to see the suspects, if they are found guilty and responsible, pay for their crimes," Foster stated, even though the state does not have a "hate crime" law that would impose stiffer penalties for offenses committed on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.
"This obviously is a big local story that we've been following from the beginning," he added. Still, in the time since the arrests were made, "there have been several other major stories going on in the local scene as well, so you haven't heard as much about it lately."
While indicating that "our focus here is on local news," Foster said that the story hasn't attracted much national attention.
"I can't really make policy for what the national news networks do," he stated, though "a few have requested video from us."
But Foster said he believes that situation will change.
"In all honesty, I believe that once more of the details come out, once this hits the courtroom, I think you probably will see more national coverage," he stated.
Cybercast News Service previously reported that Associated Press wire stories on the killings were carried by Knoxville news outlets, CBS News and Fox News, but other major media had yet to mention the matter. Conservative columnist Mark Alexander called it "a case study in journalistic malpractice."
A search of the Nexis database on Thursday found that since the May 8 story on this website, no other major media outlets have reported on the case. Telephone calls and emails seeking comment from ABC News, NBC News, CNN and the New York Times were not returned by press time.
However, conservative talk show host Michael Savage said on his May 9 radio program that the Knoxville situation "got me sick," and on Thursday, the Christian Broadcasting Network website discussed the story under the title "An Act of Domestic Terrorism You Haven't Heard About."
Robert Zelnick, a professor of journalism at Boston University, told Cybercast News Service Thursday the Knoxville murders, "as gruesome as they were, need a strong peg to reach a national audience."
"Racism would certainly be one. Celebrity involvement would be another. An epidemic of criminal activity of this sort would be a third," he said.
"The coincidence of white victims and black perpetrators doesn't pass muster, though the coincidence of white perpetrators and black victims might because of its relative infrequency," Zelnick added.
Still, "cases like this do make you resist the nonsense peddled by certain self-anointed black 'civil rights leaders' who suggest that the high incidence of black male incarceration is a function of society's racism," he said.
That claim is "nonsense," according to Zelnick. "It is a function of the breakdown of spiritual, cultural, educational and family value systems in the African-American community."
This story just doesn’t fit their agenda. Sad but true.
“the high incidence of black male incarceration is a function of society’s racism”
NO. It’s because black males are commiting more crimes per capita, NOTHING ELSE!
Didn’t you hear? White referees call more fouls on Black NBA players than they call on White players.
These trials will never, ever get national press attention — th evictims were white and the perps black. No good (i.e. leftist) political ends would be advanced by pursuing this story.
It’s a true shame, but there is no independent American press — it became extinct about 1967.
There’s whites in the NBA? Must be mistaken!
Let me suggest that reports that the male victim was made to eat his own penis makes this case “unique enough” to merit national attention...
Thanks for posting this story.
The lack of national coverage of this horrible story shows the complete corruption of the national media. They are nothing but shills and pimps for the DNC and their socialist agenda. This kind of story puts blacks, who must always be shown as victims, in a bad light.
This will never see the light of day.
Bet You Haven't Heard
I live about 150 miles from Knoxville, Tennessee and you would think that any kind of sensational crime would be like local news in our part of the country. But such is not always the case.
You've probably never heard the names Channon Christian or Christopher Newsome. They were two young students at the University of Tennessee who were carjacked, raped, tortured and murdered.
If you don't have a strong stomach you probably shouldn¹t finish this column, as the murders were so brutal they're apt to make you sick.
Newsome, the young man was raped and beaten, they then castrated him and shot him several times. Then they dumped his body by some train tracks and set it on fire while his girlfriend was forced to watch.
Channon was gang raped over a period of days then her breasts were cut off while she was still alive, then they sprayed cleaning fluid in her mouth in an attempt to erase the traces of DNA, then her body was put into a garbage receptacle.
It seems to me that with the headlines and airwaves screaming about such inconsequential things as who is the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby and the bogus case against the Duke lacrosse players they could find space to report a brutal crime worthy of Saddam Hussein and his two demented sons.
But have you seen anything on the networks, The New York Times, The Nashville Tennessean? I haven't.
I wonder if it could be that the five perpetrators who have all been arrested were black.
If this had been white on black crime Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and their ilk would have descended on Knoxville like a swarm of angry bees. I guess the lack of TV cameras discouraged them.
A free press is one of our most precious rights and a selective press one of our most dangerous realities. To suppress or ignore one of the most hideous murders of the decade is asinine and reeks of political correctness and agenda driven formats.
Is reporting the latest lewd episode of Paris Hilton's privileged life or playing Alex Baldwin¹s raging diatribe for the thousandth time really more important than letting the public know about a cruel and demented crime like
this?
Race should not enter the picture where crime is concerned and every decent human being should passionately condemn such a horrible thing as this no matter what color the victim or the perpetrators are.
Shame on the American media for letting such a violent crime as this slip through the cracks. I wonder what else they're not reporting.
Pray for our troops.
What do you think?
God Bless America
Charlie Daniels
May 7, 2007
The article posted doesn’t tell the half of it. I read a more in depth article about the crimes, and am sorry I did so. It’s the stuff of Hannibal Lecter.
The so-called black leaders of this country are such hypocrites. I don’t see things getting better for black culture. I think it will become increasingly more depraved.
FNC (Hemmer) interviewed a Knoxville newspaper reporter about this earlier today.....he said “I don’t want to get too far into this, but there is DNA at the crime scene.....etc” to which the reporter agreed.....but absent hearing about it elsewhere, a listener would not know that BOTH victims were raped, and that the correct DNA statement would have been quite different.
Ah, you got me there. This country has had much better days. I am educating my children so that they may live in other country’s. I do not see the US as a viable option in the near future.
Oh my GOD. Now I’m sick!
“I don’t see things getting better for black culture. I think it will become increasingly more depraved.”
Sad but true. Depravity almost seems the goal of “black leadership” — and it certainly IS the goal of their leftist puppeteers.
If the victims were a black gay couple -- and they were killed in this manner by southern white conservatives, the story would go on for months... The candle light vigils alone would be demand full color...
Are some victims more equal than others? And if that's not it, what is it? Let's cough up the truth New York Times? Any insights Washington Post?
We on the right have had a long time to start up a decent, fair press. We haven’t done so. Fox News was OK for a while, but is now barely better than CNN.
So when is some rich Republican (the left says we’re all rich) going to finance a right-wing press?
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