50 Years Later, We Know That the NYT Distorted the Kitty Genovese Story to Drive an Agenda

Newsbusters ^ | March 15, 2014

[SMGFan]

On Friday, March 13, 1964, in Kew Gardens, Queens, Winston Moseley murdered Kitty Genovese, a twenty-eight-year-old bar manager, in Queens. In a March 10, 2014 column (HT Instapundit) in the New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann reviewed two recently published books on the murder and its aftermath, one by Catherine Pelonero and the other by Kevin Cook.

[SMGFan]

And even today , many people who know of the crime are familiar with the inaccurate story of Kitty Genovese.

[Cicero]

Fascinating. I’d forgotten what the Kitty Genovese story was about, but immediately remembered as soon as I started the article.

This is the first I’ve heard that the original story was totally wrong, and therefore all the hundreds of follow-up articles were wrong, too. Has the NY Times ever apologized for this?

[Stosh]

And these are the people who wind themselves into a tizzy over Fox News.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

WHAT? You mean The Enemy Media has been manipulating us for, like, FOREVER?

Say it ain’t so! ;)

Control the News, Control the People.
Control the Food, Control the People.
Control Healthcare, Control the People.
Control the Weather, Control the People.
Control the *Insert*, Control the People.

We’re Screwed. Well, a good 51% of America is.

I, however, see it all quite clearly.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

Well, hell, they never apologized for Duranty’s blantant disreagard of the Holodomore.

[Taxman]

Upon reading that story, I decided to never be a “bystander” if I saw a crime being committed.

I vowed that I would do something to thwart the crime or aid the victim.

In 1983, I got my chance. I helped apprehend a young man who mugged two British tourists on Canal Street in New Orleans one Sunday night.

I am, of course, much older now. But I still feel the same way.

The fact that a lot more of us “good guys” are carrying is, IMHO, having a positive influence that cannot but help to reduce the crime rate.

It is too bad one of the people who saw/heard Kitty Genovese that fateful night was not carrying — Kitty might still be with us, and the perp would, perhaps, not have survived the incident?

[BenLurkin]

What was the agenda?

[Stepan12]

I think it is incompetence on the "New York Times" part and deceit on the part of the police chief who was interviewed by Abe Rosenthal.

The New York police arrested a person for a murder that Kitty Geneovese's killer, Winton Mosley, later confessed to. When this was mentioned to the police chief, the police chief parried this story by saying 38 people witnessed the murder and did nothing. The "New York Times then ran with the deceitful story and the rest is urban myth... history.

[SMGFan]

My conclusion the past 40 years since I heard of the story was society was uncaring about crime in the neighborhood and would look the other way and not get involved. Apathy in big cities especially New York. But you are right , I am not sure of the agenda.

[relictele]

The Genovese saga was/is a staple of college courses, especially psychology and sociology. It is the go-to anecdote for lazy profs and TAs to demonstrate desensitization, conditioning, etc.

Naturally, none of these ‘academics’ ever cracked a book to find out if their chestnut was truthful or accurate.

[KosmicKitty]

Remember this from a college psych class back in the 70’s. Used as an example of distributed responsibility.

[Monmouth78]

I always interpreted this as an attempt to distract from the issue of black on white crime. During the mid-1960’s there was an explosion of black on white crime as the black crime rate skyrocketed and the end of segregation brought blacks and whites in contact more. The fact that many of the criminals responsible were self-styled black power acolytes made it even more un-PC of a story to cover for the liberal media outlets like the New York Times. So what to do? They can’t just ignore it. It had gotten to be the kind of thing that was omnipresent in too many people’s lives. The America lifestyle was being radically changed as fear of crime caused flight from public places in big cities — parks, public transportation and even libraries became dangerous and were abandoned by non-underclass individuals. So what to do for the liberal intelligentsia?

The Kitty Genovese story became part of a “counter narrative” that steered the discussion, and people’s thoughts, away from taboo ideas and toward interpretations of events that support the dominant narrative. In This case, those scared neighbors became the bad guys: middle class white suburbanites were a much to blame as the killer. It’s clumsy and obvious, but it works on most people if social pressure is reinforcing it. This is what sophisticated propaganda that has been developed through application of academic psychology looks like. Cultural Marxism. Until conservatives wise up to this stuff, we are in trouble.

You better believe that Obama is as well versed the cultural Marxist cannon as he is in the classical Marxist cannon.

[Lurking Libertarian]

I went to the link and read the whole article. I see that the New York Times story was wrong, see less support for the claim that it was intentional (the Times apparently accepted the claims of the City’s Police Commissioner, not an unheard-of thing for a newspaper to do in the pre-Watergate era), and see zero support for the headline’s claim that this was “to drive an agenda.” What agenda? The article doesn’t even suggest one, and I don’t see one.

[ifinnegan]

Agenda was generalized slander of Amercan character and society. Demoralization of general populace. Inculcate mistrust among members of communities.

[Amagi]

Yes.
That resonates.

[Repeal 16-17]

One more lie from the New York Slimes. Is anyone surprised?

[Swordmaker]

According to a recent exposé Police Commissioner Michael Murphy, fearing that the killing of Kitty Genovese might derail efforts on the Civil Rights front met with the Metropolitan Editor of the New York Times, A.M. Rosenthal, and told him of his concerns . . . and stressed the behavior of the fictional 38 Eye-witnesses who failed to call the police during the attack, rape, and murder of Kitty Genovese by this guy:

Can you see a Liberal agenda? Rosenthal assigned reporter Martin Gansberg to interview Murphy and write a story about the witnesses's failures to call the police during the attack. Gansberg based his entire story on that interview and checked NOTHING by talking to any of the so-called witnesses. . . Even going so far as quoting an anonymous witness as saying "I just didn't want to get involved."

This certainly deflected public attention from the racial facts of the crime to the horror of neighborly apathy. . .

[ronnie raygun]

I also heard she was a lesbian, could you imagine the uproar today..oh the humanity!

[Uncle Lonny]

Quote:

“What you haven’t heard about the Kitty Genovese murder is that her killer, Winston Mosely, is black. ( A TV movie based on the Kitty Genovese murder portrayed her killer as white.)

You can say “Kitty Genovese was killed when her neighbors ignored her screams…” but you can’t say “Kitty Genovese was killed by a black man…” it’s just not allowed.”

http://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2012/02/kitty-genovese-hoax.html

[kearnyirish2]

“In this case, those scared neighbors became the bad guys: middle class white suburbanites were as much to blame as the killer. It’s clumsy and obvious, but it works on most people if social pressure is reinforcing it.”

This was before my time, but I had family in NYC back then. Whatever the desired outcome was (and however it works on young malleable minds), to this day the descendants of those whites who fled the cities of the tristate area are more hardened than ever in their resolve to keep segregation here in the north. My town is across a river from Newark NJ, and people who have bought homes here are determined not to let the same general collapse take place. Our area (like nuch of the country) is gradually shifting to a mix of Hispanics & Asians as whites stop breeding and others are imported to keep the schools full, but even the newcomers understand the need for vigilance.