Elle Purnell of the Federalist explores a major legacy media outlet’s coverage of the recent Charlotte transit murder.
The New York Times is getting mocked, and rightly so, for a Monday evening headline contorting the brutal slaying of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on public transportation in Charlotte, N.C. into a story about “a Firestorm on the Right.”
I know most people only read the headlines, and most normal people don’t read The New York Times at all. But the entire article is every bit as craven as the headline, which deservedly made the rounds for its ghoulishness.
We only get four sentences describing the attack before the article’s three authors launch into the main focus of their story: Republicans and their pouncing. Mind you, this isn’t a case of some reporter trying to come up with a fresh angle after publishing dozens of newsier articles on the subject; this is the Times’ very first article about Zarutska’s death, according to its own internal search results.
Eduardo Medina, Emily Cochrane, and Richard Fausset (who covers “conservative culture” for the Times) explain how the murder has become:
“…an accelerant for conservative arguments about crime, race and the perceived failings of big-city justice systems and mainstream news outlets in the Trump era.”
Yes, this is a story about the “Trump era.” If you read the whole thing, you’ll discover that Donald Trump’s name is mentioned seven times. That’s almost as many times as the attacker, whose name is mentioned nine times. The victim’s name is mentioned only five times, excluding photo captions.
Medina, Cochrane, and Fausset go on to say the “outrage” is:
“…part of a pattern in which President Trump and his allies highlight horrific crimes to bolster their case that the country is plagued by ‘American carnage,’ as Mr. Trump put it…”
Because the real pattern here isn’t the crimes, it’s all the Republicans noticing them.
