Dave Gibson, Norfolk Examiner, July 22, 1:10 PM
On July 20, the Loudoun Times-Mirror ran a story in their online version about an armed robbery, “Four men robbed in Sugarland Run.” The piece went on to say that while the men were walking, three men approached them and one suspect showed the men his gun and demanded their money.
The article gave the description of the man from the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office as “6 feet tall, 170 pounds, and was last seen wearing a white shirt and blue pants.” A tip line number for the Sheriff was given.
Now it would seem to me that a key component to the suspect’s description was left-out of the story. How could anyone ever help identify the suspect if they do not even know what to which race he belongs?
{snip}
I called the newspaper and spoke with a staff writer who wished to remain nameless, who told me that the paper follows the AP Stylebook and that “all mention of race must be taken out of every story.”
However, the latest edition of the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook allows the identification of someone by race if it is important to the story. The guidelines state: “the term ‘black’ is acceptable for a person of the black race.” When offering a description of a dangerous suspect still at large, race is definitely important.
I was also told by the staffer that the suspect was in fact black.
{snip}
I sent an email to Paul Smith, the executive editor of the Loudoun Times-Mirror, asking for an explanation, but never received a reply.
{snip}
This country has now reached the point where we are so afraid to be called racist, that we cannot even give an accurate description of a violent criminal, which is of course, to the detriment of all races.
If anyone would like to send a message about this policy to the paper’s editor Paul Smith, the following is his contact information:
( 703 ) 777—1111
psmith@timespapers.com
Original article
(Posted on July 23, 2009)
Comments
This hasn’t been the only shenanigan with a Virginia newspaper this week. A few days ago, the Richmond Times-Dispatch apologized for once having dared opposed Federal judiciary forced integration. The bright side is that both the RTD and the newspaper in this article will both be out of business in ten years; those who know how to read won’t want to read them anymore.
“When offering a description of a dangerous suspect still at large, race is definitely important.”
That is true for obvious reasons: It is a public-safety issue. And yet I’ve seen story after story after story in which race was not mentioned but things such as the clothing of the suspect WERE described.
Political correctness is a deadly poison.
I used to read, at a minimum, one paper everyday and tried to read three major papers on Sunday. Now I have stopped bying papers, their bias is just too much to bear. Let them go under.
Fine; from now on we can’t give the color of a chased or getaway vehicle, nor should we give the make and model, as it will unfairly reflect on the innocent people who also own that brand and color. Therefore, we must only be on the lookout for a “4 door vehicle”. That narrows it right down, and doesn’t add any more wasted time and manpower, does it? Never mind that just adding the make and color would eliminate much unnecessary effort, confusion and fear…
Oh, and another point. As the article mentions the policy of refusing to mention race in their publication doesn’t indicate racial blindness; rather, it reflects absolute and total fear.
This form or censorship was pioneered by the New York Times.
Their adopted publication, the Boston Globe, also had a policy that every day a “person of color” should somewhere, on their front page, be posted in a positive light.
Now both papers hang by financial fingernails.
This happens on the nightly news and in the newspaper where I live almost daily. Black criminals are refered to as men, boys, students and teens. Many times they outright lie and say, “police have no description” when in fact the race of a suspect is always included in the police reports. I just have to wonder, who is it they are trying to fool by hiding black criminality? White leftists just explain away or outright deny that blacks commit more crimes.
This article is a perfect example of why newspapers are encountering such financial difficulties. It’s not so much the Internet and electronic access that have wrecked havoc on the traditional print media. It’s because they’re so politically-correct, liberally biased, and as a result, rotten at reporting the TRUE FACTS, that have turned so many people, such as myself, off.
Unfortunately, this is also the unstated policy of “The Morning Call” newspaper in Allentown, PA, as well.
If the perpetrator is white, a reference to this will often be included in the Police Log article - along with a mug-shot, surveillance photo, or yearbook picture of the suspect. When the perpetrator is black or Hispanic, however, the article will only say that “a male” (or “a suspect”) was involved and/or apprehended.
The amazing part is how detailed the descriptions of easily-changeable features can be: the color of clothing, make of gun, year and model of get-away car used in the crime will be noted but never the suspect’s race or (non-white) ethnic group - an unchangeable feature and one of the first things you notice when viewing someone.
Luckily, these stories are usually followed by readers on the local TOPIX message board (http://tinyurl.com/nltbd4), where a lot of those posting have police scanners and aren’t shy about supplying the rest of the details involved in the case.
About 40 years ago, as a child, I used to feel sorry for residents of the USSR who couldn’t get the truth from their newspapers. Now I feel the same way about those of us readers in the USA and the UK, who have arrived at a similar fate.
So newspaper owners and editors wonder why no one is buying their product, anymore?
Nothing new here…seems to be standard operating procedure for lots of news outlets.
It’s said that if race is omitted in the description, very likely the suspect is black.
This is exactly why I don’t read newspapers anymore.
This is now standard practice among all American newspapers. They will tell you if the suspect has a beard (easily shaved) and what color shirt he was wearing (even more easily changed) but not what race he is. The press is dumb enough to think that this will keep us from figuring out that the perps are usually members of the diversity. Unfortunately, for many brainwashed white people, the press is right.
Just one more reason to be happy that so many newspapers are near bankruptcy.
In the first, two, armed (with semi-automatic weapons) black men did a smash and grab in a black store in a black neighborhood. (I know this because the video was shown on the local news). It was a viscous and violent crime that must have terrified the workers for life.
In the second crime, a white man went into a convince store and without showing a weapon, ‘threatened’ the clerk with the non-visible weapon and left, I believe, without anything.
Now, in the first instance, even with the surveillance video, the Buffalo News didn’t report the race of black men with weapons. However, in the second crime report, the Buffalo News identified the man without a weapon as white.
I wrote to the Buffalo News and asked why the black men with weapons weren’t identified as black but the white man without a weapon was identified as white.
I was told that it was the policy of the Buffalo New not to identify the race of a suspect unless it was relevant to the crime; for example, a hate crime.
I wrote back and said neither was a hate crime (or weren’t reported as such) and yet the News identified the white man as white but not the black men as black.
They wrote back and said that they were going by the descriptions given in the police report.
I wrote back and asked them if they were telling me that in the store with the black men with weapons, no one identified the men as black to the police officers?
They never wrote back.
Hey all you AmRenners who haven’t yet canceled your newspaper subscriptions - what are you waiting for?
Failing to report the race of a suspect has led to a catch-22 situation because this defeatism in the name of “diversity” contributes to minorities believing they are being “racially profiled” when they are stopped and questioned for crimes.
Read your local newspapers and keep a log of the crimes and the races of the criminals. This will fly in the face of every statistic you will see printed about crime.
These are the fruits of multiculturalism and moral relativism. If you can’t describe the suspect, can you describe the crime? If you can’t, seems there was really no crime committed.
Make no mistake, it’s not going to get any better, at least not for a while. Just about every newspaper out there is on the ropes, while at the same time a black president’s administration is handing out bailout money left and right. For example, NBC’s parent company General Electric has already received a gazillion dollars of money from the government, so don’t be surprised to see your local affiliate avoiding the race of suspects, and don’t be surprised to see the NBC national news throwing soft balls at the administration (not that they weren’t rather statist to begin with).
Um, I don’t think it quite goes far enough. In first place, they are still printing the sex of the (alleged) offenders, which is sexist. Moreover, it is too easy for a reader to jump to conclusions about the race of the perp by parsing other facts. For example, a report on an armed robbery committed by men in baggy pants of a business on Martin Luther King Boulevard can easily be inferred to be an armed robbery committed by black males. If they mention that anyone was armed, they give away the game by suggesting that an armed robbery was being committed. They should not say if money was taken, because that would also besmirch the minority perps by imputing a motive. Therefore, the paper needs to elide not only the “who”(black men), but the “where”(MLK Blvd), the “how” (gun), the “why”(money) and the “what”(robbery). Thus, they can report that some men encountered someone else somewhere sometime, and that something transpired. That’s all the public really needs to know anyway, isn’t it?
I don’t see why all newspapers in the world cannot work this way starting now.
Riley
And this is happening in the state of my ancestors??? Has it occurred to any of you red-blooded Virginians/Southerners that there is a serious problem happening in this country, and that we need to handle it? Obama is polarizing this country like I’ve never seen it before - it’s getting time to come together, make a plan, and git ‘er done. Patriots unite!
On a related note - I have noticed that when, on those rare occasions anymore, that they DO mention race, it is always a “black” suspect…but NEVER an “African-American!” Seriously, watch for this. I have never once heard the term “African-American” used to describe a criminal suspect. Remarkable…
In recent years we have seen the Houston Chronicle refrain from describing the race of a criminal suspects. Sometimes it is abundantly obvious that the Chonicle simply took a press release issued by the Houston PD or the Harris County SO, edited out the race of the suspect, and then printed it as “news.” That’s what passes for journalism at the daily newspaper in America’s third-largest city. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. In cases where they don’t, the comments by the Chron’s readers deride the newspaper for succumbing to political correctness. More and more people are catching on, and therefore fewer and fewer people are interested in subscribing to the daily newspapers.
As a practical matter, one can simply assume that the perpetrator of any violent crime is black and be right in the overwhelming majority of occurences. In addition, most blacks have taken to affecting strange, even bizarre, names in the past generation, another dead giveaway.
Propaganda is defined as the dissemination of false information or the selective omission of information for the purpose of promoting a particular agenda so what this newspaper is doing is providing propaganda. This is what happens when the “news” becomes more concerned with opinion than with simply providing facts.
Because half of all crime is committed by 13% of the population, and we know which percent even if the media deliberately suppresses this information.
So what if a few more people are assaulted, robbed or murdered? They are just victims on the ever growing altar of political correctness.
Janelle from Allentown:
I lived in or near Allentown for a number of years and am not surprised to read this about the Morning Call. (I once made their front page when it was declared the worst city in America by Business Week IIRC.) The Call is typical. Years later, and not so very long ago, I dated a lawyer at the Philadelphia Inquirer. She called herself conservative, went to Dubbya’s inauguration in ‘01, led a lilly-white life in a nice Main Line town, and yet refused to speak-out on race realism, immigration, or any other high profile issue regarding Whites. In fact, it was a point of friction between us.
Bottom line is these people are terrified of social ostracism by their peers — other newspapers and non-profit leaders — and it’s simply easier to offend fellow Whites. (Recall Wilmot’s description of such traitors in “The Dispossessed Majority.)
It seems President Obama is attempting to split Americans through a racially inflamatory method, even though He from His own words did not know all the facts. would anyone of Us call someone “stupid” if we did not know every detail available before making a derisive insult? Has any president ever called a member of a police force…the military…fire department…paramedics…congress…senate stupid? It seemed like a planted question, the press conference was about heath care reform? and it seemed odd there were only about 8 or 9 questions which seemed very low in a hour long period
Turn the tables on them. Write a letter to the editor politely stating you have heard that newspapers are leaving race out of criminal suspect descriptions to conceal the scope of black crime. You have noticed that their paper seems to follow such a policy. You will henceforth assume all criminal suspects in news stories are black unless a description of race indicates otherwhise. Or simply state you won’t read an incompetent newspaper that omits basic facts in simple news stories.
I think I can guess the answer. One more special exemption that’s “for blacks only”.
— Eric wrote:
“This is now standard practice among all American newspapers. They will tell you if the suspect has a beard (easily shaved) and what color shirt he was wearing (even more easily changed) but not what race he is.”
Afterwards, I was told by a bystander (who asked me what all that fuss was about) that he had indeed seen such a person …. a black man in a gold shirt! But of course, the police couldn’t mention that irrelevant detail!!!
Even the police are becoming PC.
Oh, and another point. As the article mentions the policy of refusing to mention race in their publication doesn’t indicate racial blindness; rather, it reflects absolute and total fear.
It’s ok though, most all of us know that the failure to mention race is tacit admission that the race is BLACK!
This may be a little off the subject, but there is a radio station in Columbia, Missouri that releases info about crimes from the night before, etc. I have been surprised that this “crimestoppers” type bulletin mentions the physical descriptions of the suspects including race. It is depressing to hear but also refreshing that there is at least one media outlet that simply reports facts. Simple.
Irish Pride:
I moved from St. Louis to Carbondale, Ill. at the beginning of the year, and the W-KY/S-IL/SE-MO media seem to be more willing to report the race of suspects and arrestees, and show previous mug shots, if available, even if it might sully the stellar reputation of certain minorities. I think the reason is that non-big city media are owned by smaller chains or small one-town companies.
Reply to Skip at #30:
I agree absolutely. You really have to read between the lines with newspapers today. What a sad decline for the once great American journalism ethic. You can pretty much take it as a fact that when the race is NOT mentioned, the offender in question IS black. Its like the old (possibly apocryphal) tale of the first seaman recording in his diary “the captain was sober today”. In other words the captain is a drunk.
Oh, this is also sexist against males. They shouldn’t print the gender either, just say a person in a gold shirt.
“the paper follows the AP Stylebook and that “all mention of race must be taken out of every story.”
The AP stylebook is not the law, and need not be followed. It is the editor’s choice to not call a black criminal black.
In Little Rock an ice van was robbed by two perpetrators. The driver of the van obviously saw what they looked like, buy by the time to crime was reported on TV the public was told to be on the lookout for two males, one wearing a red bandanna and the other wearing a blue bandanna. That is the only info the public was given!
The rag called the News Journal in Wilmington, DE has the same policy. When I sent the paper an email to complain I was banned from posting. Today at the Delaware State Fair I bought a baseball cap and had sewen on it “Banned by News Journal.” I will wear it with pride. We can fight stupid people.
This is the Loudoun Times-Mirror responding. We posted a response on the original site, and will post the gist of it here as well.
It is not our policy to omit all mention of race. That was a misunderstanding. We do follow AP style, but what it actually states is this: Race is not to be used as the sole identifier of a person; however, when it serves a useful purpose as part of a broader description of a person, it is to be included.
We regret the misunderstanding, and we welcome all questions and comments.
