"We do not reference race unless it is a fact that is central to telling the story," said the editor, Gerould Kern. "By all indication, these attacks were motivated by theft, not race. Further, there is no evidence to suggest that the victims were singled out because of their race. Therefore we did not include racial descriptions in our initial news reports."
Well, that's Kern's explanation. Here's mine. The Chicago Tribune didn't mention the race of the attackers because the attackers were black. Do you think the Tribune would have failed to mention the race of the assailants if a white mob had attacked blacks? It would have been headline news for two weeks, wall-to-wall 24/7 coverage, perp walks for all the suspects, calls for congressional investigations, the Attorney General would set up a special team of prosecutors and the White House would have sent in Seal Team Six.
It seems to me that a newspaper really trashes its own credibility when it protects members of a flash mob because of their race. Kern says the race of the assailants wasn't important because the attackers weren't motivated by race.
Well who cares? When someone commits a public crime (or lots of crimes) I for one want to know who the attackers are, which means I want to know everything about them--their age, sex, race, educational level, high school GPA, dropout status, rap sheet, sperm count, whether their mom is on welfare, if their dad supports them and what kind of sneakers they wear. When a newspaper tells us less than it knows it's covering up for people who doesn't deserve that kind of deference. It's placing political correctness over its duty to print the news.
No wonder no one reads the paper anymore.
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