Bob Herbert On Race Conscious Coverage Of Murder Victims

Bob Herbert writes about the uneven media coverage given to murder victims, even today. When he was a young reporter, he notes, the tilt toward stories about white victims was obvious.

[T]he press is still very color conscious in the way it goes about covering murder. Editors may not be asking, “What color is that victim?” But, on some level, they’re still thinking it.

Which is why we’ve heard so little about an awful story out of Chicago. Some three dozen public school students have been murdered since the school year began, most of them shot to death. These children and teenagers have been killed in a wide variety of settings and situations — while riding a city bus, playing in parks, sitting in the back seats of cars, in gang disputes, in robberies, in the crossfire of sidewalk shootouts.

It’s an immense and continuing tragedy. But these were nearly all African-American or Latino kids, so the coverage has been scant.

Note that CNN’s Anderson Cooper has been covering the increase in the deaths of Chicago school children.