(2002) Media Ignore Kansas Interracial Mass Murder

CNSNEWS.com ^ | 10/14/02 | Jim Burns

[kattracks]

(CNSNews.com) - The Wichita, Kan., trial of two brothers charged with murdering five people and wounding a sixth in a December 2000 crime spree has local residents and prominent black leaders wondering why the national media have been relatively silent in the matter.

Because the suspects, Jonathan and Reginald Carr, are black and their victims white, many observers in Wichita expected the brothers to be charged with hate crimes, which presumably would have sparked national news coverage.

It didn't happen and some are raising the specter of a racial double standard by the national media, based on the lack of news coverage of this mass murder.

Wichita District Attorney Nola Foulston said earlier that the crimes were motivated by robbery and not racial hatred. In addition, she said, the state of Kansas has no hate crime law.

Neither Foulston nor defense attorneys Val Wachtel and Jay Greeno representing the brothers would grant interviews to CNSNews.com until the trial was over, saying the judge in the case has placed them under gag orders.

Blacks Question Dearth of National Coverage

Ken Hamblin, a black syndicated radio talk show host, said he thinks the case should be prosecuted from a hate crime standpoint.

"Clearly, it was a hate crime. It was a very malicious hate crime. It was brutal hate crime. When you look at how brutal and malicious the act was, there was a venomous attitude towards people in a particular race in question because they didn't know them," he said.

Hamblin said he wasn't even aware of the case, admitting that even in his capacity as a talk show host, and despite the fact that "this is exactly the kind of stuff we cover ... I had no clue."

"It's another perfect example of the double standard brought about by the media," Hamblin said.

Akbar Shabazz of the black conservative group Project 21 is not surprised that the trial is receiving minimal coverage.

While Shabazz does not believe the Carrs committed hate crimes, he added, "It's not popular to portray black on white crimes in the national media today because it's politically incorrect."

"The cases are very rare when you do have black on white hate crime prosecutions. But I don't see the hate crimes angle. I feel that these are some brutal guys who definitely deserve the death penalty, but I didn't think that they took them and killed them strictly because they were white," Shabazz said.

Limited National News Attention

Local news coverage of the trial has been intensive, but even local residents have taken note of the absence of national attention.

One recent letter to the editor to the local Wichita newspaper was blunt about the lack of national media attention.

"If this had been two white males accused of killing (five) black individuals, the media would be on a feeding frenzy and every satellite news organization would be in Wichita doing live reports," claimed Trent Hungate in a letter to the Wichita Eagle.

The CNN website Friday published one Court TV account of the Carr trial. The Fox News website published an Associated Press story about the trial on Tuesday. The ABC News website moved a story on Sept. 6. CBS News and MSNBC made no mention of it on their websites.

On the local front, two Wichita cable television channels and one radio station are providing continuous coverage of the trial, and the regional Associated Press has been covering it as well.

The Wichita Eagle reported Friday that many locals gathered around televisions at the local YMCA, a local health club, local residences and offices to see what was transpiring at the trial.

Other Wichita citizens are taping portions of the trial to watch after they finish work or school.

One merchant, Tom Young told the newspaper he has been watching the trial all week. "I'm glued and repelled at the same time," he said.

"What happened is so terrible, so horrifying. But there's something about seeing a live courtroom, which is so different from Hollywood. It's like seeing justice in action," Young said.

KWCH-TV General Manager Kathy Mohn told the Eagle her station has not received any negative calls about the coverage. Some viewers have requested gavel-to-gavel repeats at night.

"We feel we are being very responsible to provide coverage because of limited seating in the courtroom. But we will not repeat it because it is not entertainment and particularly not at night, when children would have greater access to it," Mohn said.

Syndicated columnist Sam Francis has accused the national media of "passivity" for its lack of coverage.

"When a white commits a murder against a black, it's national headlines. But when two blacks force their way into an apartment, rape two white women and take them and their three white male friends and murder them in cold blood, it's not even worth a national news story," said he in a recent column.

Francis also thinks the trial hasn't received much national coverage because Kansas has no "hate crime" statute, "so there was no legal purpose in searching for a racial motive behind the crime," he said.

"Since the media do a good deal of searching in crimes where the race of victims and killers are reversed, one might expect them to undertake a little investigative reporting in this crime. They haven't," Francis said.

But Shabazz thinks Francis is exaggerating the facts in the case. "I don't believe that all white on black crimes receive national attention. But I do believe that this crime and this act, as gruesome and brutal as it was, just doesn't fit into hate crimes legislation as it is written today," he said.

Shabazz emphasized that if the Carr brothers would have "found any rich person or anyone else they could have robbed, they would done the same thing to them."

Justice Department Silent

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) Friday did not return calls seeking comment on why the federal government was not pursuing hate crimes charges in the case.

The department's website describes hate crimes as "offenses motivated by hatred against a victim based on his or her race, religion, sexual orientation, handicap, ethnicity, or national origin," but also warns about the need to distinguish between certain crimes.

"While such a definition may make identifying a hate crime seem like a simple task, criminal acts motivated by bias can easily be confused with forms of expression protected by the U.S. Constitution," the Justice Department website states.

DoJ also states, "African Americans are more likely to be targets of hate crimes than members of any other group. Of the nearly 8,000 hate crimes reported in 1995, almost 3,000 of them were motivated by bias against African Americans. Other typical victims are Jews, homosexuals, Muslims, and, increasingly, Asian Americans," according to the website.

Currently 42 states and the District of Columbia have some type of hate crime law, according to DOJ. Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico, South Carolina and Wyoming have no state hate crime laws.

E-mail a news tip to Jim Burns.

Send a Letter to the Editor about this article.

[republicman]

---The case has become a rallying cry for white supremacists groups across the nation because the suspects are black while all the victims were white. Weeks before the trial was set to begin, a Nazi group held a rally in Topeka where the case was repeatedly cited.---

How dare the racist liberal turds sit there and take EVERYONE who wants people to be treated equally under the law, equally by the media, and group them all under the heading white supremacists.

WHatever groups might be out there using this, Conservatism isn't about white supremacy, its about equal treatment under the law, equal treatment by the media. No one is asking that the media ignore the Byrds of the world, and trumpet the Wichitas. No one is asking that the Shepards of the world be Ignored and the Dirkhisings trumpted. No we just want equality

But the liberals, on the other hand, ARE deliberately hiding some and not others, THEY are the propagandists, THEY are the supremacists and THEY are the haters, every stinking last one of them.

[Joan912]

Since all crimes involve some degree of hate, "hate crimes" statutes per say are redundant and unnecessary.

It is very telling, however, that the lamestream media has 'chosen' not to report on this horrendous massacre. If circumstances were more 'correct,' this would be on page one of every newspaper in the country.

The two evil ba@tards deserve nothing less than death.

[bandleader]

Well Golly,Gee,Whiz,Do You Mean To Tell Me That There Is A DOUBLE-STANDARD?Who'd A Thunk It??

[bandleader]

I Want ON!

[buffyt]

Black on white hate crimes are so COMMON that they don't make the news. White on black hate crimes are very rare, that is why they make the news!!!! I think rape should be treated as a HATE crime! Many things should be a hate crime, not just black on white crime. And I say this as a person who has a black ancestor.

[I. Ben Hurt]

KS Flyover, your work is much appreciated.....

Thanks.

[buffyt]

YOU ARE TOTALLY CORRECT!!! EVERY crime is a HATE crime. Great point!

[JohnAPestrosius]

The case has become a rallying cry for white supremacists groups across the nation because the suspects are black while all the victims were white.

Funny how the AP was never too bothered by the rallying cry of Black Supremacists in Texas and all across the nation when the suspects were white while the victim was black.

[Dante3]

Buffy,

These two mutants targeted the victims because they were WHITE. They also spouted racial hatred while commiting their vile deeds. This makes it a hate crime.

Their behavior makes it a hate crime.

Some 10 - 15 years ago several white teenagers (both male and female) hopped a freight train to Chicago. Unfortunately for them, they naively got off in South Chicago (a Black area) - they were immediately set upon by a pack of hyenas. The similar behavior from the Chicago variety of hyenas. Rape, racial slures and taunts, then murder. One or two of the teens survived to tell the horrible details of that nightmare.

Guess what? Again media silence and no charges of "hate crime" were lodged against these animals.

Of course it's a hate crime for the victims and their families to harbor any negative images of the Blacks.

[F.J. Mitchell]

All hate crime laws should be declared un-Constitutional and removed from the books. Murder, mutilation and brutality are crimes already, with proper punishment prescribed upon conviction. What is on a person's mind while committing a crime, is obviously anything but love for the victem. If there are hate crime laws in place though, they should be administered equally.

If this pair of jackals are found guilty by the jury and sentenced to death,and the sentence is carried out sometime between conviction and the time they die of old age, that is as much as can be done to them, whether they hated their victems or not.

Hate crime laws and the way they are applied and those the media choose to notorize, is all part of the liberal plan for hate crime laws in the first place-to create politically correct victems of one group regardless of how rarely it happens to them and to demonize another group even if it's members rarely commit such crimes and are far more likely to be victimized by the liberal's designated victem group.

[Britton J Wingfield]

The woman who survived was on the Montel Williams show last week. I did not see it, but my girlfriend did.

[Tailgunner Joe]

bttt

[IronJack]

We need to keep this on the front burner until someone in the media wakes up and clubs Jesse Jackson over the head with it. This is one of the most foul, heinous abominations ever committed on US soil, yet these pukebags hide in obscurity. Every human citizen of this nation should be demanding their heads. Instead, all we hear is an ominous, complicit silence.

[Bogolyubski]

You're forgetting: Some of us are more equal than others.

[goldstategop]

The race angle has been ignored because it would make the black scumbags look bad. And making even black scumbags look bad would be politically incorrect. In a way you can pardon the Kansas media; its not like they need the grief from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton about how those ditzy Kansas Republicans are ganging up on po' salt of the earth African American homeboys.

[gcruse]

You're kidding me, right? The LA case has had massive publicity compared to this truly heinous crime that received no attention outside the local region.

Media Ignore Kansas Interracial Mass Murder

[ctdonath2]

Time for a new news network, reporting facts in a uniform manner sans blatant bias. Might not become a major contender, but there is a viable & profitable niche.

[ctdonath2]

Change the colors & transplant to another city, and it would be lead news.

[Fishrrman]

Of course the mainstream media ignored this, the brutality and wantoness of this crime, and the color of the two who were responsible for it, did not fit their worldview.

The case of the Carr brothers was reported in depth by American Renaissance in a timely manner.

I cannot provide a direct link to it, but if you'd _really_ like to know the truth about the Carr murders, go to amren.com and search their online back issues The facts are there in all their blood and horror.

- John