Surveillance footage from August 22 shows a knife-wielding hooded figure just before he brutally stabs a woman on a light rail train in Charlotte. Fox News began extensively covering the story soon after the video was released, but other mainstream media outlets were basically silent.
"CBS actually did briefly cover the incident," notes Bill D'Agostino, senior research analyst for NewsBusters. "They are the only of the three broadcast networks that have talked about it."
ABC mentioned the story late Monday, but both it and CBS had dropped it by Tuesday.
He says the fact that the suspect, DeCarlos Brown Jr., is black, and the victim, Iryna Zarutska, was white, "makes this especially a nightmare for them."
"There are numerous other reasons for them not to mention it, but then you factor in the race of the perpetrator and the victim – that alone would be enough," D'Agostino submits. "If she weren't a Ukrainian refugee, it'd be the same story. They would never touch it."
At CNN, Brian Stelter said mentioning the ethnicity and rap sheet of DeCarlos Brown was akin to racism.
"It's being used as a political symbol! Some of the comments are baldly RACIST, stoking fear of African Americans, because this man attacked a white woman ... it's eye-popping!" he said.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt blasted media at a Tuesday briefing.
“Many outlets in this room decided her murder was not worth reporting on originally because it does not fit a preferred narrative. Her death was entirely preventable. DeCarlos Brown should never have been on that train that night. He should've been behind bars!” she said.
In contrast, the media was quick to cover the death of Jordan Neely in 2023. When the homeless, mentally ill black man entered a NYC subway train while saying, "I'm gonna kill everybody. I could go to prison forever, I don't care," Daniel Penny, a white former Marine, responded. He restrained Neely to deescalate the situation, but the chokehold led to Neely's death.
Penny was arrested, tried, and ultimately acquitted, and D'Agostino's organization maintained that Penny acted heroically and would have never been charged if he or Neely were of a different race.
D'Agostino also remembers when Darrell Edward Brooks Jr, a black man, drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, in 2021, killing six people and injuring 62 others. The headlines first mentioned the car plowing into the crowd, but D'Agostino says they stopped once the perpetrator's ethnicity was made public.
"If you are a black person who commits some kind of crime, you're safe from coverage," he summarizes. "They need to maintain this narrative that black people are a permanent victim group."
NewsBusters calls it "bias by omission."
