There is terrorism in Baghdad but a criminal gang problem has also been plaguing our nation’s capital. In an officially declared “crime emergency,” black criminals had been robbing, assaulting, and even raping tourists in the National Mall area, where the Washington Monument and the World War II and Lincoln Memorials stand. This is an area that had been considered safe and “tourist-friendly.”
Three young black men were arrested for these crimes, but you could search in vain in the local media for any reference to their skin color. Instead, they were described as “D.C. youths” or just “five people.”
Stories about the National Mall arrests in the Washington Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, NBC-4, WTOP, WUSA-9, and the Associated Press all failed to provide readers information about the race of the perpetrators.
The same kind of coverage was on display when a jewelry store employee in Georgetown, a mostly white area of D.C., was shot by “assailants” on August 20. The Post said, “Police described two suspects as men in their thirties. One was in an orange turtleneck and a dark sweatshirt. The other was pulling a wheeled suitcase with a duffel bag on top.”
There was no mention of their race. An NBC-4 story, however, noted that “The perpetrators are described as dark-complexioned black men, possibly in their mid-30s. One of them was wearing a dark-colored sweatshirt and an orange turtleneck.”
When I took journalism, I was told that a reporter seeks out who, what, when, where, why and how. But that’s not the way it is for most of the crime reporting in the nation’s capital.
This is bad journalism. And it proves that the liberal media do not care about providing basic facts to readers. Instead, they manipulate the news to create a desired impact. The apparent purpose is to keep district residents-and visitors to the nation’s capital-in the dark about the nature of the crime problem. They do not want you to know about the reality of black crime because the media think you would be less inclined to think favorably of black people. The media do not think you can be trusted to handle the truth.
While the victims of that group of thugs lived through the attacks, a gruesome murder was committed in Georgetown by another black gang. This victim, a British tourist, had his throat slit, and his attackers tried to rape his female companion. The reluctance of the media to identify those criminals as black led to Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell writing a column defending this cover-up. She claimed their racial characteristics were not relevant to the story.
Crime in the nation’s capital hit the media close to home when David E. Rosenbaum, a New York Times reporter, was attacked and beaten on January 6 in the northwest part of the city and died two days later. The Washington Post and New York Times gave extensive coverage to the case, focusing on the pitiful response to the discovery of his battered body by the district’s emergency services.
I know it’s politically incorrect to point out, but his alleged assailants also turned out to be black.
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