Republicans and conservatives have “pounced” on the fact that a brutal black-on-white murder in Charlotte, North Carolina that occurred on August 22 and was recorded on security video has received no publicity on Axis mainstream media outlets. (That’s how the event will be reported when the progressive, Democratic propaganda media organs finally have to mention the story.) August 22: that’s more than two weeks ago. The clip above captures the moment right before a career criminal, Decarlos Brown Jr., 35, who had 14 arrests on his record, slashed the throat of Iryna Zarutska, 23, on a light rail train in Charlotte, killing her almost instantly.
But it wasn’t news. Huh.
Charlotte embargoed the crime as long as it could, keeping the video secret. This is how the violent and insufficiently policed Democrat-run cities claim that violent crime is decreasing, I guess. Even after the horrific murder became (well, sort of) public, the NY Times, Washington Post…oh, you can name the rest by now, I hope…didn’t find that it was news fit to print or that darkness over the crime would harm democracy. Rasmussen reports wrote yesterday,
Several conservative commentators have noted that the news media was quick to tar a white high school student as a racist with a “punchable face” based an a photo of him smiling at a Native American activist (and jerk) who was harassing him. Writes Prof. Glenn Reynolds,
One of the things we’ve learned over the years is that the press can rile people up about pretty much anything….But while rabble-rousing is the most obvious exercise of press power, rabble-snoozing — the power to keep a news story dormant and out of the general public’s notice — is undoubtedly a bigger one.
…Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, was killed on a Charlotte commuter rail train by a crazed black man, Decarlos Brown, Jr. He sat down behind her, and then, for no obvious reason, pulled out a knife and began stabbing her in the throat. There was blood everywhere.
And there’s video, which the Charlotte town officials tried and failed to keep secret. But the national press is, as noted above, not simply downplaying it, but ignoring it.
They’re not even making excuses. They might say that violence on commuter trains isn’t news — though I don’t know if that’s true when you’re talking Charlotte instead of the Bronx. They might say that black on white violence isn’t news, though that’s kind of an iffy position. Everyone knows, and DOJ statistics demonstrate, that’s it’s much more common than white on black, but do they want to invoke that as a justification? Maybe they don’t want to encourage random violence by crazy people? But they cover that all the time.
The truth is, this story just hurts the narrative. The black-on-white angle hurts, but the real problem is that Decarlos Brown, Jr., is a repeat violent offender who has spun through the revolving door of the criminal justice system for years, a man with 14 arrests, many for violent crimes such as larceny, armed robbery, and violent threats. But despite being regularly arrested, he was repeatedly released….
The reason why the story is being snoozed is that the press doesn’t want to support President Trump’s national program against violent urban crime, which involves swift arrests and prosecution, with substantial penalties. This approach flies in the face of the mild “no cash bail”/ “restorative justice” approach being pushed in many big blue cities, which has had predictable results….Since the number one rule for the legacy media is “thou shalt not support anything Trump does,” naturally the Zarutska murder can’t be covered. And it won’t be, unless they can find — or manufacture — some alternative angle that will make Trump look bad. So far, they’ve come up a dry hole.
Read it all here. Is the Instapundit founder being unfair? Well, can you see any other reason why this story is just coming to light now? I can’t.
Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!
Charlotte’s’ female Democratic mayor certainly bolsters Reynolds’ conclusion. When the story finally started leaking out, Mayor Vi Lyles statement emphasized the a city can’t “arrest its way” out of problems like this without mentioning the victim at all.
***
Meanwhile, one of the few news publications that has finally covered the story, the NY Post, drove me nuts in its insistence on calling a guy who was caught on video preparing to murder the woman…
and doing it, then seen “wandering through the Lynx Blue Line train — dripping blood across the floor as he carries the weapon” the “alleged” killer. He’s the killer. He just hasn’t been convicted, but he’s the killer.
Ethics Alarms 
Seems you got the same tweet in there in two different places.
Not any more! (The perils of trying to finish a post while on a phone call at the same time!)
Oddly enough, I like the idea of eliminating cash bail. But only in favor of keeping criminals locked up pending trial unless they:
1. are a non-violent offender
2. Have a well established presence in the location (Steady job, family, etc).
3. Would suffer more financially from leaving than paying the max fine.
4. Aren’t considered a flight risk for other reasons.
I don’t think the cash bail actually makes things better. It lines the pockets of bondsmen, and releases people into the public who really shouldn’t be. I believe, but can’t prove, that bail doesn’t significantly alter the probability of fleeing justice. IF that’s correct, it’s adding costs to no purpose.
Of course, that’s not how no-cash bail is implemented in reality, so this may be ‘Imagine’ quality wishful thinking on my part.
https://x.com/theonlydsc/status/1964793131448295673?s=46
“Republicans and conservatives have “pounced” on the fact that a brutal black-on-white murder in Charlotte, North Carolina that occurred on August 22 and was recorded on security video has received no publicity on Axis mainstream media outlets. (That’s how the event will be reported when the progressive, Democratic propaganda media organs finally have to mention the story.)”
Axios:
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/08/iryna-zarutska-stabbing-video-republicans-maga
CNN jumping in just 2 hours ago at 9:30a (EST) on Sept 8, 2025: https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/08/us/iryna-zarutska-murder-ukraine-refugee
“Video shows fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee on Charlotte light rail – stirring debate on crime in major US cities”
I’m mildly impressed Trump declined to comment until he knew more.
A lot of assumptions in your initial post. First, murders are not generally national news. This one, like most murders (not all–here in DC we don’t get coverage of a lot of Black on Black murders) got local coverage, immediately, from the local MSM.
https://www.wbtv.com/2025/08/26/could-have-been-anybody-witness-describes-aftermath-deadly-stabbing-charlotte-light-rail/
Then, it got national attention after the video was released last Friday. Why? Because that’s the type of thing that gets huge clicks. Video.
Now, outlets like Newsweek are pursuing the angle you mentioned–was this guy let off of earlier charges too easily? Coverage is skyrocketing also because rightwing activists are talking about it, and now the biggest media megaphone in the country, Trump, is talking about it.
That’s how these things work. Remember Matthew Shepherd? He was a gay guy killed by two straights. Initially, not national news. But activists all over the country held vigils. Politicians noticed and started talking about it. Within two months, national debate about gay bashing and Shepherd. Conservatives at the time said “why aren’t you talking about Jesse Derthick?” He was a 13 year old who got raped and murdered by two homosexuals about the same time. Answer–no one was holding vigils all over the country about him. Rather than showing liberal bias in the MSM, the fact that this conservative leaning murder only took two weeks to go national could be seen as evidence of conservative bias (obviously, it’s not–the difference is Trump plus the speed of modern communications and the break in the MSM monopoly on news).
Finally, the comments against the mayor for bringing up homelessness and mental illness seem wrong. Her statement expresses deep sympathy for the victim and appropriately mentions the killer was homeless and obviously insane. That doesn’t excuse the murder anymore than mentioning that the guy who killed Lennon was a Christian fanatic, or the guy who shot Reagan was insane. This wasn’t a sex crime or robbery-linked murder. If we are going to study this case for lessons learned (and we should) we have to…look at the facts, the specific etiology, of this crime.
Media bias is really hard to prove. It usually takes a mound of data and statistical acumen. Some of the best studies show that the more partisan one’s beliefs, the more one perceives bias in media, and the more one believes that bias is dangerously powerful. This works on the left and on the right. Usually, neither conclusion, by either side, is correct. And to know if either is, you need data and crunching.
Media bias is NOT hard to prove. It is obvious. Also a murder like the one in Charlotte, which is especially lurid and brutal, is absolutely national news fodder, certainly as much as, say, the death of Trayvon Martin. A white on black murder like that one would not only be national news, it would be a cable news feeding frenzy. You’re simply denying what is inherent in the story, and saying media bias is “hard to prove” is, frankly, insulting. The evidence is overwhelming except to those how have an interest in denying it.
I don’t think you answered any of my points, except to reassert how fiercely you believe that the media is biased. That’s not an argument. I took your points seriously, and responded. You’re convinced that two weeks to become national news proves bias. I give reasons why that is not so. You say “the media is biased.” That’s not answering any of my points. I could be wrong, but you brought emotionally grounded certainty to a debate, and didn’t lay a glove on my arguments.
I tend to agree with you that a White man doing this to a Black woman would get to be national news faster–that has a lot to do though with two things: rarity and the aforementioned activism. White on Black violence has a host of people who work very hard to make sure it doesn’t get dismissed or ignored. The historical resonance of White on Black violence makes that an easy sell, not just to the media but the population. Whereas there’s a very dark history of media and population and politicians exaggerating Black on White violence, from before Emmitt Till on up to recent times. And yes, rarity–Blacks are seldom the victim of White crime, criminology data shows.
All of your points have been debunked and defenestrated on this blog for years, usually by me. I’m not going to repost the evidence I’ve already accumulated since 2010: that’s why your comment is insulting. If someone writes, “It’s hard to prove that the moon landing wasn’t faked,” I am not obligated to recover and post all of the evidence. The best description of the Times, the Post, ABC, NBC, CBS et all is the analogy of the dishonest waiter, who only makes meal bill calculation mistakes in one direction: his own.
When has “60 Minutes” ever deceptively edited an interview to make a GOP candidate look better before an election? How many contrived examples of Presidential collusion with a foreign power has the New York Times covered credulously against Democrats? How often has the Times published as fact a fake history screed like the “1619 Project” that spread conservative propaganda? When was the last time a mainstream media platform announced that it viewed its duty to be a nagative about a progressive candidate as possible, which is what the Times declared regarding Trump in 2016…and so on: the Huter Biden laptop, the embargoing of Biden’s dementia; the Times refusal to report Biden’s staffer’s rape accusation…How many Democratic Senators expressing an opinion in a Time op-ed prompted an editor’s apology for publishing it after a staff mutiny? Survey after survey shows the news rooms across the board are overwhelmingly progressive, and more progressive than the population at large.
The stalking and murdering of a young woman just sitting on a train while a camera captures it all is not normal, and is an indictment of many operations, leaders and institutions—-a whole lot more than, say, a single lifetime perp resisting arrest and overdosing on drugs dying because of negligent handling by a bad cop…but not to the mainstream media. I have tags on most essay here: check “Nah there’s no mainstream media bias” or “biased journalism.” It’s not difficult to prove mainstream media bias at all, unless one is determined not to accept reality.
When has “60 Minutes” ever deceptively edited an interview to make a GOP candidate look better before an election?
The 60 minutes editing was nothing unusual at all. It’s what happens during a taped interview. Editing. Done with every one who has ever sat down with 60 minutes. Or any taped interview show.
How many contrived examples of Presidential collusion with a foreign power has the New York Times covered credulously against Democrats?
The Russian effort to elect Trump was not a hoax. Two bipartisan reports from the Senate intelligence committee confirmed millions were spent by Russia to reduce support for HRC and increase support for Trump, as well as suppress Black turnout. The level of contact (collusion not proven, I agree) between the Trump campaign and figures linked by our own intel community to Russia is absolutely unprecedented. No campaign ever talked to representatives of a hostile power as much. The FBI got a tip from a foreign intel of an ally that a Trump foreign policy advisor was compromised. They HAD to investigate. And the media HAD to report it. It was news. Yes, the dossier was full of raw intel, some of which seems to have been false. Some media outlets credulously reported them as true or likely to be. I don’t think the NYT did that?
How often has the Times published as fact a fake history screed like the “1619 Project” that spread conservative propaganda?
This is your strongest argument. I don’t think I have an exact parallel, and I think the 1619 project has some weakness in its history that conservative and non-partisan historians have identified well. That said–the New York times passed along as true claims about WMD and links between Iraq and Al Qaeda that served Cheney and Bush very well. They were arch conservatives in their day. So the New York times published a shit ton of bad data, much of it based on torture, that led to a war that conservatives of the day really wanted, and liberals didn’t.
When was the last time a mainstream media platform announced that it viewed its duty to be a nagative about a progressive candidate as possible, which is what the Times declared regarding Trump in 2016…
That is not what the Times said. Check the record.
and so on: the Huter Biden laptop
Another decent point by you. I will say this–caution about publishing something when you don’t know the provenance is part of the media’s job. Remember the rush to cover the fake draft letters about Bush? The media looked dumb because they didn’t triple check. Here, those peddling the laptop story had links to Russian intel, and couldn’t say that the hard drive hadn’t been tampered with. What it looks like is that parts of the hard drive were legit, parts were inserted by actors unknown? But my memory is hazy on this, so the truth may be more on your side on this one.
, the embargoing of Biden’s dementia
There was no EMBARGO. Just a huge mistake. The media fucked this one up, just like they messed up WMD and Al-Qaeda and Saddam being buddies. And even with the blind spot, some of us saw Biden was failing. I myself called for his removal as candidate, or at least for a strong democratic challenger, because he was failing.
; the Times refusal to report Biden’s staffer’s rape accusation…
I’ve recently done a fairly deep dive into that account. It’s pretty weak. The media has never covered some of the weaker allegations against Trump. Granted in the frenzy of Kavanaugh, they covered the exceptionally weak bullshit story by the third accuser (the sad truth is that the second accuser from Yale had the strongest evidence, and got the least media play), but I don’t think the Biden accuser got less coverage than she deserved. You know where she is now? Russia. Weird.
How many Democratic Senators expressing an opinion in a Time op-ed prompted an editor’s apology for publishing it after a staff mutiny? Survey after survey shows the news rooms across the board are overwhelmingly progressive, and more progressive than the population at large.
Yup–you’re right about both of these points. The uproar was silly/wrong, and the surveys do show that, particularly on social issues (less so on economic ones).
The stalking and murdering of a young woman just sitting on a train while a camera captures it all is not normal
Agreed–but remember, the video only came out Friday. It was national news by Monday. So….looks like, by your own standards, the media is doing a pretty good job covering this?
, and is an indictment of many operations, leaders and institutions—-a whole lot more than, say, a single lifetime perp resisting arrest and overdosing on drugs dying because of negligent handling by a bad cop…but not to the mainstream media.
Remember, one of the things that gave George Floyd instant national coverage–his video was instantly available. It doesn’t matter that he was a drug user or lifetime perp. He has a right not to be killed by a cop, same as you and me. He deserved the coverage he got, I think. It was newsworthy.
I have tags on most essay here: check “Nah there’s no mainstream media bias” or “biased journalism.” It’s not difficult to prove mainstream media bias at all, unless one is determined not to accept reality.
We may have different ideas what constitutes proof? But thanks for the detailed response, and I apologize if my initial response was frustrating. I haven’t read this blog in years, so I surely missed lots of documentation of what you consider media bias. That said–for the most part, I find your examples unconvincing. I don’t think they show media bias, although as I concede above, some of your points do hold up.
“The 60 minutes editing was nothing unusual at all. It’s what happens during a taped interview. Editing. Done with every one who has ever sat down with 60 minutes. Or any taped interview show.”
I stopped reading at this unethical gaslighting. You’re an unscrupulous and untrustworthy shill for left-biassed reporting.You’re fortunate that I don’t ban you for that, and I might yet.
Competent, fair, objective interviews do not deceptively edit filmed interviews to make a candidate, especially a Presidential candidate days from an election, appear more articulate and responsive than they are particularly what that quality is an issue in the election. It was partisan election interference by definition, and the fact that CBS and “60 minutes” staff didn’t see that proves, again, that the mainstream media is persistently biased.
I did read the whole comment, and it’s better than you might think. I see evidence of wishful thinking, and an over reliance on something like Hanlon’s razor, but jdkazoo appears to be honestly engaging and recognizing some of the points, even if he or she is giving too much benefit of the doubt to the media.
Good. But defending 60 minutes is indefensible.
Put your big boy pants on, and come join the adults who aren’t afraid of reading folks who might be wrong and with whom they tend to disagree?
Oh goodie: closer to being banned than ever! It’s really simple: I don’t tolerate deliberate misinformation and propaganda here.Nor is 1984ish “War is Peace” allowed. The 60 Minutes Harris interview was obviously rigged to beat Trump just like the illegal Saturday Night Live free campaign ad was. The suit was settled because CBS and Paramount knew just how damning discovery would be. It’s not hard, and I don’t know why you can’t comprehend it: CBS asked a question and spliced in an answer other than what Harris said, while editing so it looked otherwise. That’s unethical journalism, by all Codes and standards. And, as I said, the has has never used that device to make a Democrat look good or a conservative look better. “Big Boys” don’t fight with cowards who deny reality: it’s a waste of time.
Go ahead, insult me again on my own site. See what happens.
Wow. Where did that talking point come from?
Welcome back!
Just a minor question. Regarding the Matthew Shepard and Jesse Derthick cases, you noted that there were vigils nationwide for Shepard, but not for Jesse. But you stop there and don’t ask the question why there were vigils for Shepard. I ask this, because being from Wyoming, and being forced to attend the annual Matthew Shepard symposium for some of my classes, I found the whole Shepard issue to be wildly overblown. Certainly Wyomingites in general disliked the sudden national narrative that Wyomingites were a bunch of homophobes who hung known homosexuals on the fence. (The national attention the movie “Brokeback Mountain” also didn’t help the Wyoming image from the other direction.) Shepard was involved in drugs, and the two murderers were also involved with drug running, and Shepard ended up dead because of a conflict over drugs (the drug angle, and the big pipeline of drugs from Ft. Collins to Laramie and from there up and down I-80, also doesn’t help Wyoming’s image). Yet it took very little time for the message to go out that Wyoming hates gays, that this was a hate crime because Shepard was a homosexual, and whatever truth about the situation was submerged beneath the narrative.
I know I look at news from a very conservative aspect, but when we’re in the middle of cultural battle where gays and lesbians are seeking national approval, and an attack against a homosexual man happens, it isn’t very hard to see that this story would be a boon for the movement, whereas the Jesse Derthick case would be detrimental. It isn’t like many people outside of the Wyoming community knew Shepard, so why were there so many vigils held for him? Was it just because of the activists, or was it because the media helped fan the flames, as it were?
I think I do agree that this Charlotte case is being fanned by conservative media trying to push a particular viewpoint (namely the crime rates are higher than are being accounted for), and that Instapundit is guilty of the “the liberals’ reaction is the story.” But then, I feel cautious about this because rare but sensational events lead to knee-jerk reactions and bad policies. I would prefer a more sober media that dug deep into all the facts of the case before rushing to national coverage.
Ryan, you raise some brilliant points. First, on the facts–I’m no expert, and have never read a book about the case, but my dim memory of some deep dives into the trials suggests you are right to be skeptical that these were two homophobes looking to kill a gay guy. They may have been after his money. Now, human motivation is complex, and they may have chosen him because they saw him as uniquely vulnerable, or they could have chosen him to rob and kill because they don’t consider gay people human. But that doesn’t affect whether the media has to cover THE MURDER. That became national due to activism, just as this one has. For years, there were two accounts of the Emmitt Till case–his friends’, who said he may have whistled at a White woman, and her story that he was sexually provocative in a more aggressive way. We now know the woman lied, by her own admission before she died. But the truth of the incident wasn’t discernible, the media had to report the controversy. Did some media assume Shepherd was a victim of anti-gay bias, and get over their skis on their certainty. I’m sure that happened.
A few years ago, I had an email exchange with a young reporter at Phoenix’s Gannet-owned Arizona Republic. I asked her why they were no longer including mug shots of arrested criminal suspects. This was during BLM/George Floyd days. She lamely said the new corporate policy was “not to publish photos of people taken on probably the worst day of their respective lives.” In other words, if the suspect was black, they didn’t want people knowing that was the case. As far as I know, the policy is still in place.
I have to take issue with the crime rates have declined. If you increase the total population with an influx of people in who may in fact commit fewer violent crimes per 100,000 then the rate per 100,000 falls even if the total number of crimes rises in absolute numbers.
A second element is that if that new population has a fear of reporting crime because they have been told that they should be afraid of being deported for reporting a violent crime against them it stands to reason that reported crime and hence stats will be depressed.
It’s hard to tell what people actually mean when they say “crime rates are down.”
Perhaps they mean “It’s not as bad as 2020 and 2021 anymore, even though it’s still higher than before. We still can’t get our homicide rates back down to the levels they were before COVID / George Floyd. But it’s lower than last year, so it’s down! Down, it’s down! Repeat after me…crime is down.”
From my perspective in Rochester NY, deep in the heart of Great Upstate, homicide rates are still higher than before COVID. The increase from 2019 to 2020 / 2021 was steep, while the return to the old rate seems more gradual. Offhand I will state that the homicide rate in Monroe County (where Rochester is located) more than doubled in the years immediately after COVID.
Recent headlines in the _Democrat and Chronicle_, our struggling local daily, will simply say “Crime Down in Rochester Area, Nationally” without specifying the years of comparison.
(Hypothesis: The best way to mislead people is to focus on busy, well meaning individuals who only glance at the headlines, which don’t really communicate reality.)
Additionally the self-styled “Kia Boys” (Boyz?) are still stealing cars and joyriding where I live, though perhaps that is down from a peak of (say) two years ago. Occasionally someone gets pissed off and shoots the thief (for example, Byron Bell, now 38, shot Ja’hod Snow (18) dead after Ja’hod stole the family’s car).
The elimination of cash bail in New York State, combined with “Raise the Age” legislation, allows joy riding car thieves, especially if underaged, to be home for dinner the same day they are arrested. Understandably, the theft victims are irate. Their car gets damaged, the thief is home for dinner with an appearance ticket to go to court two months from now.
In an incident with less poetic justice, joy riders in their teens or early twenties are accused of vehicular manslaughter in the death of a long time asset to the community. The teens were fleeing from the police and are charged in the death of Thomas Chase, 92, of Brighton. That case may be still working it’s way through the courts, perhaps.
https://13wham.com/news/local/rochester-police-identify-man-killed-in-brighton-crash-outline-events-that-prompted-chase-maria-bernard-barons-street-clifford-avenue-east-linden-elmwood-stolen-kia-teens-suspects
= – = – = – =
I apologize for the long and discursive post. The newspapers tell me that crime is down. It still seems too high for me.
Think tanks such as Brookings have articles on the post George Floyd spike in homicide rates.
Steve Sailer has written about it, too, in his own Saileresque style.
Artificial Intelligence is at the ready when I conduct a Google search,
The AI Overview begins like this:
“Far-right commentator Steve Sailer’s comments regarding the death of George Floyd and the subsequent protests have focused on the alleged rise in Black-on-Black homicide rates, which he connects to the Black Lives Matter movement and what he calls the “racial reckoning”.”
It’s nice to know that AI thinks the rise in Black-on-Black homicide is alleged. It’s good to remain agnostic about these things. AI is really going to help me learn about these things. Too bad I already know enough that the AI output seems unreliable.
charles w abbott
rochester NY
I saw that video last week. It is gruesome. I also saw that there were other people on the train. Why did no one intervene?
jvb
Two words. Danial Penny
That, my friend, is truly depressing.
jvb
I read about this story on Legal Insurrection. If I am remembering correctly, the gist of it was that it happened so suddenly — and with no advance telltales — that the attack was over before people could react. They said there were people who tried to help after with CPR and, I presume, trying to staunch the bleeding, but to no avail.
DG
The killer disembarked the train with no one trying to stop him. I accept the fact that the murderous act could have caught everyone off guard and dumbfounded at first but letting him get off at the next stop without intervention suggests they had time to evaluate the costs and benefits of intervening. It only takes one person to attend to the victim
It looked like the people around were women. Even if there’s a guy around – we have to consider the other factors of bringing your bare knuckles to a knife fight. Yeah – someone could follow him and keep tabs, start doing real time reporting to a 911 operator – but depending on the stop the man exited – if it’s desolate, you could be alone on the platform with him – again, bringing a camera to a knife fight.
I know this probably goes against the “weenie code”, but this sicko seems to have been apprehended without further incident (moral luck?) without the immediate community engagement to bring him in. Putting the focus on medical response and assisting the victim turned out to be the correct call in this scenario.
Tim, upon reflection, you are probably right.
Here is more video of the murder:
Thanks. I’m baffled that she doesn’t even look injured or is even acting injured. Did she not know she was injured? There was no response to help her from the people around her and she didn’t motion for assistance, at least in this video. I know Jack has a new post up on that subject.
We should not let the major of Charlotte C of the hook either. She wanted to have the CCTV footage suppressed.
This prompts a thought from me: The video should be public, and it should be made public, responsibly and it should be easily accessed in that responsible venue; but it also shouldn’t be taken and reposted everywhere. It shouldn’t be hosted on every social platform so that when I open each application, I see the video and images over and over again. We as a society would do well to figure out how to make information available, no matter how tragic it is while keeping that information only where it needs to be. Unfortunately, the government has proven themselves unable and unwilling to be paragons of free speech, so the only solution is for all of this to go viral to combat the inevitable censorship.
The perspective of the Allsides site is “There’s no such thing as unbiased news.” I agree with this position.
Perhaps an all-seeing, all-knowing present-always-everywhere deity is capable of this. For humans, there is no “view from nowhere” — we are always situated somehow in our lives, our experiences, our education, and our identities, and this means we HAVE A PERSPECTIVE.
Training ourselves to identify/characterize the bias / perspective a person has is useful in increasing our own discernment, which ultimately helps us see what some of our OWN biases are. Our own biases / point of view / blind spots are the hardest to see clearly, both because our entire lives are lived from that ego-centered perspective AND because of the psychological mechanisms of ego defense that prompt us to believe that our own point of view is INHERENTLY more correct (less biased / more accurate / more rational) than alternative points of view.
What surprises me a little, given that people on this site are, as far as I can tell, not adolescents, is the outrage at repeatedly discovering what to me (and Allsides.com) has long been obvious: bias (a point of view that highlights some features, is blind to others, and predisposes one toward some interpretations more than others) is inescapable for humans.
Baloney. A professional’s duty is to guard against bias. Journalists now actively encourage it” “advocacy journalism.” It is very possible to report the facts with out spin or including opinions. That’s what training is supposed to do; that’s an editor’s job as well: flag bias.
Your comment is a rationalization: “everybody does it” or “it can’t be helped (so its OK).
JM: Your comment is a rationalization: “everybody does it” or “it can’t be helped (so its OK).
Ah I see (thank you for the entertainment!) the problem with my comment is that it was simply an observation about human behavior that lacked “spin” or “including opinions” which you have helpfully appended to show how it is done.
I hereby nominate your response for Notable Achievements in Unintended Irony!
“Man(repeat violent criminal), unprovoked, slits woman’s throat from behind on train”
“Man, unprovoked, slits woman’s throat from behind on train”
“Man slits woman’s throat from behind on train”
“Move along. Nothing to see here!”
Indeed, there are degrees of bias, which is why it is useful to have a scale.
For sample C, it is harder to detect, less obvious.
Yet, as many on this thread have commented (it is in fact a key insight of the OP), the decision of what to cover as news (and what not to cover, there are an abundant supply of murders in the US every day) is itself a decision about what is more important, less important.
So sample D: ________ (no statement at all) is also revealing bias.
The suppressing of the news of this murder is not an accident; it is deliberate.
The first reason is that this news had to be suppressed was out of fear that it would play into the hands of Donald Trump, and the Republicans. That is because Democrats are weak on crime. People are getting the impression that Democrats fight harder for criminals than for regular law abiding folks.
The second reason is related to the mid-term elections, and North Carolina has to elect a new senator. Senator Thom Tillis (R) has decided not to run again, and the Democrats are running former governor Roy Cooper, who is now criticized for his record of being soft on crime. North Carolina is a swing state, and the Democrats hope to regain control of the Senate. News of this murder is not helpful to their electoral chances.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/09/09/oh-hi-roy-cooper-nice-of-you-to-finally-weigh-in-on-the-brutal-charlotte-stabbing-n2662959
I think one reason for the MSM’s silence is that there is no way to use the story to make guns look bad.
Bingo.
But…but…she was a plucky immigrant who just wanted to have a better life! And Ukraine! Aren’t the Ukrainians our allies in the fight against evil Trump-supporting Russia?
Honestly, do we know what the narrative would be if it had been a white person who killed a person of color?
Another reason why the mainstream media did not want to cover the story is the unfavorable race angle. Here is CNN now they have to cover the story: they try to pivot to white on black racism, as that is the narrative the MSM is comfortable with.
The NYT finally decided to mention it: “A Gruesome Murder in North Carolina Ignites a Firestorm on the Right”. The article is dated 9/8, but I’m sure it wasn’t there around this time yesterday since I did a search for her name a few times yesterday and kept getting nothing. I only found it today from another search. It’s in the US section and is not showing on the home page of the website.
NYT apologist A Friend implodes in 5…..4….3…………
PWS
This proves the bias of the NYT. The news is not the murder, it is that Republicans pounce.
As we knew it would be….but nah, there’s no bias at the New York Times!
And the CNN says “Hold my beer!”
The murderer is on CCTV video stating “I got that white girl, got that white girl”, which makes the murder racially motivated.
When conservative pundits pointed that out, they were accused of racial hatemongering by CNN. Below a link to Charlie Kirk’s reaction to Van Jones.
For just a minute, I’m going to defend the indefensible and see how I do.
Of course the story is the Republican’s reaction. The Republican’s reaction has been two narrative-driven points. First, they “pounced” on the “left-leaning” media not responding quickly enough to suit them. It was a murder, yes, but a local event that would have no significance other than Republicans trying make a mountain out of a molehill. The murderer was caught on tape and apprehended. If there is more to the story, people should be patient and wait on the legwork. (Note: I also provided the conservative media a little slack in wanting to wait to uncover all the details about the Hegseth chatroom scandal.) Now there is more to the story, but only because Republicans are trying to make a casus belli out of this random murder.
Second, Republicans are cherry picking this because they are driving an out-of-control-crime narrative and are latching onto any incident they can to prove their case. It is like the climate alarmists who latch onto any extreme weather event, regardless of how typical it might, how worse things may have been in the past compared to the present, that we generally expect extreme weather somewhere on the globe each day. Lower crimes rates don’t mean zero crime rates, which means we could expect there to be a murder somewhere. There are accusations that this perpetrator had a long criminal record and had been given slap-on-the-hand sentences, but so far there hasn’t been any detailed analyses of any of his cases, and whether the lighter sentences were justified in light of the evidence provided. Certainly leg work needs to be done, and if he was given unjustifiably light sentences, that’s newsworthy. But the leg work needs to be done.
The problem is Republicans are making their platform sound anti-crime by claiming, contrary to reports from the FBI, that crime is up. True, the Republicans are also accusing various districts of under-reporting crime, of changing charges to misdemeanors from felonies, and other corrupt practices. We should remember that theses are allegations, not proved fact. There are going to be investigations if this really occurred, and what do you expect the Republican reaction will be when the investigations come up empty? “Whoops, nothing to see here, hey, look at this random crime over here!”
Okay, conservative Ryan is back. This is far from a lengthy attempt, so maybe I have it condensed too much, but I’m trying to capture what I think is the viewpoint on the left. Any thoughts?
Let me ask a question. Why did the media report much more extensively on the death of Jordan Neely at the hands of Daniel Penny in the subway of New York City?
Why shouldn’t we report more extensively on people dying at the hands of law enforcement than people dying from a random assault? We expect more out of law enforcement, that’s why. They are bequeathed the responsibility of enforcing the law, so it is far worse if they break a law than the average citizen. This is right up there with Catholic priests sexually abusing minors — the clergy have a grave responsibility to uphold the Catholic faith, so their violations of the law, and of Catholic sexual teachings, is far worse than that of a lay person with the same conduct.
(I’m not sure I can concoct a defense for rushing to judgment and fanning the flames of racial turmoil by highlighting lethal white cop/black perp incidents. From the perspective that wants to see racism everywhere, one of these encounters is proof positive that the nation is wildly racist. My point in this exercise is that individual incidents, like this Charlotte murder, are single incidents and of themselves not proof-positive of any of the points Republicans are promoting. I myself like good hard data, but I know that tugging a the heartstrings motives a great many people, and the story of a Ukrainian refugee being murdered by a serial thug is a tragedy that will evoke a great deal of emotion. Given that, it isn’t too hard to understand the liberal view that Republicans are coldheartedly using this murder for political gain.)
My first observation is that Daniel Penny was not a law enforcement officer. He was a former Marine, but at the moment of the incident a normal civilian. Perhaps there is some confusion with Derek Chauvin and George Floyd?
The elephant in the room is the issue of race. The main stream media have been putting forward the narrative that the USA is a deeply racist country, and incidents like the dead of George Floyd, Michael Brown, Jordan Neely, and Trayvon Martin are offered as conclusive evidence. This is despite the fact that in none of these fatalities any proof was offered that race was a factor in these fatalities.
Now a white Ukrainian refugee is murdered in a train by a black man, with the entire murder on CCTV, and the audio clearly reports him saying “I got that white girl, got that white girl”. Those statements indicate that this murder may be racially motivated.
But the mainstream media wants to bury this story as local news, nothing to report here, just a local story.
Then the social media (Elon Musk, Matt Walsh, Charlie Kirk, Tim Pool) starts picking up on the story, highlighting the soft-on crime policies of the Democrats, but also the race angle. And what do we see? CNN gets angry. They accuse the influencers who noticed the murderer’s statement “I got that white girl, got that white girl” of race mongering and outright racism. You can view the CNN video’s as I have linked these in earlier comments on this threat. Please tell me what you think of the statements made by Brian Stelter and Van Jones. They get mad because the MSM’s entire narrative about race is falling apart. And what do they do? Play the race card.
So this murder points to an elephant in the room, namely racism of black people against white people, something that the MSM claims not to exist. This is the same MSM that has been lecturing us at no end about racism because of the death of George Floyd, a criminal arrested for domestic violence who died probably due to a fentanyl overdose while violently resisting arrest.
You may want to look at the following statistics about interracial crime. In absolute numbers black on white crime is five time white on black crime. Adjusted for the size of the population it is a factor of twenty six. So now CNN is angry because their entire narrative on race is a lie.
“The elephant in the room is the issue of race.“
There are two elephants.
The other is that, unlike with Floyd & the others, in this case there are absolutely no factors that can be put forth to assign any particle of blame to the victim, nor any justifying the killer’s behavior.
Aargh! I didn’t pay much attention to the Neely/Penny case, and when I went to research it, I only did so in a hurry. That destroys my entire attempt to play devil’s advocate. I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better next time.
Another recent, but less sensational, example of rabble-snoozing is recent comments by NY Governor Kathy Hochul when addressing a black church on the recent state $250 “tax rebates checks”. It’s a “What if Trump (or any Republican) had said X?” type of remark:
“Don’t spend it all in one day. Get something you really need, okay? Don’t stop by the liquor store, okay? Buy something for the kids — buy them some food.”
https://southshorepress.com/stories/675247473-hochul-tells-black-congregation-don-t-stop-by-the-liquor-store
Seen that one in the NYT?