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Sunday, Oct. 25 2009 @ 9:07AM
As we wrote back in early September, Rocky Mount, North Carolina appears to have a serial killer on its hands. But you wouldn't know it by reading or listening to the national media.
Sex offender Antwan Pittman has been charged in one of the Rocky Mount murders
So far, 10 women have either been killed or gone missing in the town of 60,000. The latest victim was found October 12. But outside North Carolina, most people wouldn't even know that a serial killer is on the loose.
Newsweek raises the issue this week in a story about the case. It notes the media's penchant for covering white crime over black, and quotes City Councilman and local NAACP president Andre Knight on the dearth of coverage:
"If it was someone of a different race, things would have been dealt with the first time around; it wouldn't have taken the fifth or sixth person to be murdered," he says...
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| Ten women are dead or missing in Rocky Mount, North Carolina |
"All these women knew each other and lived in the same neighborhood; this is the sign of a potential serial killer. When it didn't get the kind of attention it needed, it made the African-American community frustrated."
Knight is partially right. There's little doubt that many white people see crimes against blacks as a lesser concern. Whether through overt racism, or simply caring more about people like themselves, black crime tends to be downplayed by white readers and viewers. And the media responds to those readers and viewers' interests. |
| Kate Waring was pretty, white and wealthy, but because she had drug problems, her murder's barely been covered outside of South Carolina |
But perhaps much more important than race is economics -- and the natural sympathy readers extend to certain kinds of victims over others.
In the Rocky Mount case, the victims are either hookers or drug addicts or both. Just last week, we wrote about another serial killer who hasn't become a fixation in the national news, this one in Jennings, Louisiana. Eight women have been murdered there -- and all but two are white. Yet the victims all have a history of drug abuse or trading sex for dope. So this case too has gathered little attention outside Louisiana.
People naturally don't empathize with hookers and dope addicts the way they would an innocent child or a suburban soccer mom. Those viewing from the harshest light have a tendency to assume such women brought their problems on themselves. To the rest, the murder of dope addicts and prostitutes is simply too common to raise major attention.
The same goes for even wealthy white women. Kate Waring, a well-to-do woman in Charleston, South Carolina, went missing in June after dining with two friends. Her body was found earlier this month. But despite being pretty, moneyed, and connected, she also had a history of drug problems. Needless to say, she hasn't become a fixture on Nancy Grace, who's made a handsome living off dead and missing white women and children.
So while Councilman Knight is right in his assessment that black crime victims get less attention, he's wrong that it's solely a matter of race.
It's not that the media "loves" white women or little white girls so much as it is that they HATE to report on black crime, whether it's black-on-black or black-on-white. In other words, the liberal media doesn't care about black victims and prefers not to shine a light on black criminals. Rest assured that if the alleged serial killer in the Rocky Mount case turned out to be a white guy killing black girls, the media would be ALL OVER IT. The liberal media LOVES black female victims when the alleged perpetrators are whites (the Tawana Brawley hoax, the Duke "rape" hoax/travesty and now the Megan Williams hoax). So the idea that black girls are disregarded is partially true but it's not "the usual suspects" who are guilty here but the shot callers in the liberal white media.
Posted 10/28/2009 at 05:07:02 PM