-Caveat Lector-
**a must read!**
Citing an MRC staffer by name, but without mentioning his MRC affiliation, Washington
Post ombudsman E.R.
Shipp wrote on Sunday:
"There is an explanation for the absence of
coverage of the brutal rape and asphyxiation death of 13-year-old
knowledges that it "blew it by failing to get the story on the national wires for more
than a month." Shipp wrote:
By the time Matthew Shepard died on Oct. 12, 1998 --
nearly a week after he was savagely beaten and left "tied to a
fence like a dead coyote," as The Post reported on Oct.
10, 1998 -- his story had spread around the world, and he had
become a symbol for those who urged Congress to adopt a
stronger federal hate crimes law. From Capitol Hill to
Hollywood to college campuses across the nation, the
assault on an openly gay man was denounced at rallies and
candlelight vigils. And in editorial pages, including The
Post's.
Since the first front-page story, "Gay Man Near Death
After Beating, Burning," this newspaper has carried about 80
items -- including news briefs, editorials and columns --
that have referred to Shepard.
I recount this because some readers, prodded by
commentators who are hostile to homosexuals and to what they view as
a "liberal" press, have inquired why the Shepard case
garnered so much attention while another case involving
homosexuals -- as possible predators rather than as
victims -- has been all but ignored. There is an explanation for the
absence of coverage of the brutal rape and asphyxiation
death of 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising, but those who are inclined
to believe the David Dukes, Joseph Farahs and Tim Grahams
of the world -- who have asserted that the story has been
suppressed so that homosexuals won't be portrayed
negatively -- will not be satisfied.
Start with how The Post handles crime news. "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," said Jackson
Diehl, the assistant managing editor for national news.
The Shepard story was news, he said, 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." More "routine" crimes may be
ignored or limited to news briefs culled from wire
services.
The story of the Sept. 26 death of Jesse Dirkhising in
Rogers, Ark., and the arrest of two male suspects, wasn't
transmitted on the Associated Press's national news wires
until Oct. 29. The Post, considering this a "routine" story,
carried a news brief on Oct. 30....
The AP's deputy managing editor for national news, Mike
Silverman, acknowledges that the AP blew it by failing to get
the story on the national wires for more than a month.
Silverman, who is based in New York, said he did not know about
it until the Washington Times called last month for an
Oct. 22 story: "Media tune out torture death of Arkansas boy." He
then assigned his 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."
For a variety of reasons, some people insist upon
depicting the Shepard and Dirkhising slayings as equivalent. Here at
The Post, however, the two are seen as quite different. A
hate crime homicide such as Shepard's and, four months before
that, James Byrd's in Jasper, Tex., is, "a special kind of
killing," The Post has editorialized. "It tells 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.
END Excerpt
http://www.mrc.org/news/cyberalert/1999/cyb19991115.html#2
Bard
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