Tuesday 8 May 2007

That ain't too bad

In England, serious criminal cases such as children chalking hop-scotch boxes on the pavement attract really wide spread attention.

Seems things are different in America. A truly horrendous murder of a young man and a girl failed to gain much publicity outside the state where it took place and one adjoining state. Just some detail of the murders -

Christian and Newsom had gone on a date Saturday, January 6, 2007, but did not return home. Newsom's body was found adjacent to railroad tracks in East Knoxville the next afternoon. According to investigators, he had been shot and his body had been burned. He had apparently been raped. Some reports state that his penis had been severed from his body prior to his death.

"When the perpetrators were finished with Christopher, they allegedly turned their attention to Channon. She was beaten, gang raped and at times urinated upon. When her killers finally had their fill of her, they cut off one of her breasts while she was still alive, poured bleach down her throat, in an attempt to cover up evidence. As with Christopher, they set her body on fire; however, for unknown reasons, they did not dump her body but instead placed it in a trashcan inside the apartment"

And the reason there was only limited reporting of this? Too grim for publication - no. Seems that there was insufficient novelty in what happened. Extreme degrees of horror quite often appear in the media. Some commentators have said that this is due to a supposed media bias which supposedly provides more coverage to cases in which whites allegedly attack blacks (such as the Duke Lacrosse case) than vice versa.

I think I prefer to read about kids and hopscotch.


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