Sometimes a murder is just a murder
I came across this headline from Foxnews: Ethnic Gang Murder.
But finally I came up with this:
None of this should really be surprising, Fox News has a bit of a reputation when it comes to jumping to conclusions.
Nearly 80,000 demonstrators flooded the streets in Belgium on Sunday in a silent march to commemorate a murdered teenager who was killed for refusing to give up his digital music player to two North African gang members.It did take me a while to dig up this story, it got buried in the news stories of bombings in Israel and Egypt.
The march was called by a Moroccan-born parliament member, who said the murder "stinks of racism" by increasingly violent North African street gangs — which he said, "go after victims who look like infidels."
But you wouldn't know the killing had any racial overtones from reading the AP's report on the march, which never once mentions the ethnicity of the killers. The BBC also left that detail out of its television report.
But finally I came up with this:
The teenager in question is not the actual murderer but his accomplice; identified as the young man in the Nike top, seen on the CCTV footage.I guess BBC and AP had a point when they left out the ethnicity of the killers, the last thing anyone needs now is a war between these two EU members.
Witnesses had described both offenders as being of North African origin. It now seems that Joe Van Holsbeeck's murderers are Polish.
[...]
The second suspect, the murder [sic] himself, has been identified but is currently in hiding. It is now suspected that he has fled to Poland. Detectives have come to this conclusion after analyzing signals from his mobile phone.
None of this should really be surprising, Fox News has a bit of a reputation when it comes to jumping to conclusions.
posted by amitav at 4/25/2006 11:57:00 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
first that the "leaders of the Islamic community" called on "their people" not to hide the perpetrators of the murder, and once it turned out to be the Polish kids, the same leaders were a bit upset as to why did everyone point their fingers at these African kids without any evidence.
The leaders of muslim communities around Europe always feel the pressure to show that they are more patriotic and law abiding than an average citizen of the country they are living in. Therefore, any time there is any illegal activity done by a member of their ethnic group, they have to make strong statements condemning this. If they don't, then the mainstream press will accuse them of not doing enough.
In this case it turned out that the youths weren't muslim, so now the leaders, having made their proclamations earlier, are looking rather foolish in their community. Therefore, as politicians, they have no choice but to focus the attention on someone else. It's a game they are continuously playing and are rather good at.
It's a shame that that the press, instead of focusing on the socio-economic background of the criminals in an attempt to explain and perhaps suggest ways to correct their behaviour, focus on their ethnic background. Apparently the fact that someone is a muslim, explains everything about his or her frame of mind.
Fox does more than create random connections between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. It does actually represent the views of a significant segment of American population. Many Americans are very anti-government and so vigilantism is common sense for them (e.g. the minuteman project).
As for ethnic people being evil murderers, I think it's something that communities are in general are predisposed to believe in (with little encouragement from opportunistic leaders and businesses). Otherwise it's hard to explain the reasons for the blood libel against the Jews, or the widespread idea in Russia that Caucasians kidnap children and sell them into slavery.
Yep, gotta watch out for the "others". If they don't look like you, who knows what they might be thinking.
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