red states rule
Senior Member
- May 30, 2006
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Where is the liberal media in their coverage of this double murder?
If four white guys and killed a black couple - we all know it would be 24/7 coverage and the liberal media would be screaming "hate crime"
Scant Coverage of Brutal Crime Called 'Journalistic Malpractice'
By Randy Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor
May 08, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - The national news media demonstrates a double standard in covering "hate crimes," as evidenced by the lack of attention given to the murder of a white couple in Tennessee last January, a conservative columnist charged on Monday.
However, a media analyst responded that a crime is not necessarily a hate crime simply because the victims are white and those accused of perpetrating it are black.
Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, were out on a dinner date in Knoxville, Tenn. on Jan. 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.
Five men and a woman, all African-American, have been arrested and face up to 46 charges, including carjacking, kidnapping, rape, premeditated murder, theft and robbery.
The case sparked considerable debate on Internet blogs, but mainstream media coverage has been modest.
AP wire reports of the killings were carried by Knoxville news outlets, CBS News and Fox News, but other major media outlets including CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post apparently have yet to mention the story. This so angered Mark Alexander, executive editor and publisher of the online Patriot Post, that in a column entitled "Murder in Black and White," he said the attack was "more than a case study in sociopathic evil. It is also a case study in journalistic malpractice.
"True, there are some 17,000 murders committed in the U.S. each year, but this double murder was clearly far more barbaric, far more monstrous than most," he wrote. "Yet, this story has failed to attract the attention of the national media.
"Could it be because the two victims were white and the five defendants are black?" Alexander asked.
He pointed to the case in 1998 when "three white men in Jasper, Texas, beat James Byrd -- a black man -- then chained him to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him three miles to his death. Not surprisingly, Byrd's murder received national media attention -- as it should have."
When Democratic politicians seized on Byrd's murder to call for hate crimes laws, "then-Governor of Texas George Bush said there was little need for such legislation -- after all, two of the defendants were sentenced to death and the third received a life sentence," Alexander stated.
"Clearly, hate was a motivating factor in Jasper, but it was also a motivating factor in Knoxville, which leads us to ask: Why do white-on-black hate crimes invariably result in a media feeding frenzy, while black-on-white hate crimes receive nary a mention?" he asked.
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.
for entire article
http://www.cnsnews.com/Culture/Archive/200705/CUL20070508a.html
If four white guys and killed a black couple - we all know it would be 24/7 coverage and the liberal media would be screaming "hate crime"
Scant Coverage of Brutal Crime Called 'Journalistic Malpractice'
By Randy Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor
May 08, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - The national news media demonstrates a double standard in covering "hate crimes," as evidenced by the lack of attention given to the murder of a white couple in Tennessee last January, a conservative columnist charged on Monday.
However, a media analyst responded that a crime is not necessarily a hate crime simply because the victims are white and those accused of perpetrating it are black.
Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, were out on a dinner date in Knoxville, Tenn. on Jan. 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.
Five men and a woman, all African-American, have been arrested and face up to 46 charges, including carjacking, kidnapping, rape, premeditated murder, theft and robbery.
The case sparked considerable debate on Internet blogs, but mainstream media coverage has been modest.
AP wire reports of the killings were carried by Knoxville news outlets, CBS News and Fox News, but other major media outlets including CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post apparently have yet to mention the story. This so angered Mark Alexander, executive editor and publisher of the online Patriot Post, that in a column entitled "Murder in Black and White," he said the attack was "more than a case study in sociopathic evil. It is also a case study in journalistic malpractice.
"True, there are some 17,000 murders committed in the U.S. each year, but this double murder was clearly far more barbaric, far more monstrous than most," he wrote. "Yet, this story has failed to attract the attention of the national media.
"Could it be because the two victims were white and the five defendants are black?" Alexander asked.
He pointed to the case in 1998 when "three white men in Jasper, Texas, beat James Byrd -- a black man -- then chained him to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him three miles to his death. Not surprisingly, Byrd's murder received national media attention -- as it should have."
When Democratic politicians seized on Byrd's murder to call for hate crimes laws, "then-Governor of Texas George Bush said there was little need for such legislation -- after all, two of the defendants were sentenced to death and the third received a life sentence," Alexander stated.
"Clearly, hate was a motivating factor in Jasper, but it was also a motivating factor in Knoxville, which leads us to ask: Why do white-on-black hate crimes invariably result in a media feeding frenzy, while black-on-white hate crimes receive nary a mention?" he asked.
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.
for entire article
http://www.cnsnews.com/Culture/Archive/200705/CUL20070508a.html
