[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE]
Greetings from the Underworld, my friends and foes!
I’m reading about a hostage situation, including a fatal shooting of one of the hostages, at a Trader Joe’s in Los Angeles over the weekend. It was covered nationally and even internationally.
Here’s a photo from a British news site of the suspect being taken away:
I looked at the major US news sites — CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC — and about a dozen smaller sites . . . no one mentioned the race of the suspect, no one gave the suspect’s name, and no one ran a photo.
I could understand a media policy where, in reporting shootings, we consider race to always be relevant, or we consider race to never be relevant, but not a policy where race is only considered relevant when the victim is black and unarmed.
Headlines like this are common: Police Shoot Unarmed Black Man.
But not this: Police Shoot Unarmed White Man.
Or this: Police Shoot Armed Black Man During Commission of Crime.
Or this: Black Man Shoots Unarmed Woman at Trader Joe’s.
See you in Hell!