MEDIA BIAS 3

On media bias
DEZINFORMATSIA

What do ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Time, Newsweek and U.S. News, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and USA Today have in common? While they were all busy this month covering the trial of those who murdered a homosexual man in Wyoming, none mentioned the torture/rape/murder of 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising by two homosexual predators in Arkansas.

Representative explanations:

Time's Christopher Gregg notes the Wyoming murder story "will probably endure for years to come as a symbol of intolerance and lowest-common-denominator conformity." Gregg sarcastically asks: "Could it be because we in the media elite were unwilling to publicize crimes committed by homosexuals because it didn't suit our agenda? The next stop in that line of reasoning was clear: That news is controlled by a bunch of gay-loving liberals only too happy to wield a double standard. ... The reason the Dirkhising story received so little play is because it offered no lessons. There is no lesson here, no moral of tolerance, no hope to be gleaned in the punishment of the perpetrators."

Associated Press spokesman Mike Silverman acknowledges that the AP has finally assigned their Little Rock staff to do a story for the national wires because this "wasn't a routinely awful crime; it was out of the ordinary."

The Washington Post's assistant managing editor for national news, Jackson Diehl, says, "Our policy is not to cover murders from out of the Washington area at all unless it's a case of mass murder or has caused a large local sensation or has raised a larger social issue. [The Shepard story was news because it] prompted debate on hate crimes and the degree to which there is still intolerance of gay people in this country. It was much more than a murder story for us." Diehl explained that his paper considered the Dirkhising murder "routine." "There are rapes and murders all over the country all the time," Diehl said.

Washington Post ombudsman E. R. Shipp concludes, "The Post has editorialized. ‘[Hate crimes] tell a segment of American society that its physical safety is at risk.' Arkansas authorities have not characterized the Dirkhising death as a hate crime. Matthew Shepard's death sparked public expressions of outrage that themselves became news. That Jesse Dirkhising's death has not done so to date is hardly the fault of the Washington Post."

Of the media's overt bias in this case, Joe Farah of the Western Journalism Center concludes, "Jesse Dirkhising was brutally raped, tortured and murdered -- for fun, for thrills, for the hell of it, because it felt good, maybe even because a certain politically protected lifestyle has been elevated to virtual sainthood. Don't expect to hear Bill Clinton or Janet Reno weigh in on this one. It just wouldn't be appropriate. It might offend their core constituency. After all, 13-year-old boys don't vote anyway. They don't contribute to political campaigns. They don't march and demand special rights. They are, politically speaking, expendable."