Previously we demonstrated how a local ABC station and a local NBC station were blatantly and intentionally trying to manipulate public perception of crime with selective race-based censorship.
Here is an example from Insider that is even more blatant and egregious. Insider, formerly known as Business Insider, is an American media company based in NYC with over 500 employees.
Note: These articles are from the same media outlet and written by the same author, Kenneth Niemeyer. They both cover the same homicide. Most, if not all of the same information was known at the time both articles were published. Mugshots and pictures of the suspect were all over the local news for at least two days before the publication of the first of these articles.
Jimmie Lee was a student at the University of Mississippi who went missing last July. Sheldon Herrington Jr. is a University of Mississippi graduate who was dating Lee and is suspected of murdering him. They are both Black homosexuals.
While Herrington was first arrested shortly after Lee’s disappearance, he has only just now been indicted. Investigators spent nearly eight months building their case.
In one article, the race and sexuality of the victim are listed in the headline. The article aggressively hypes an incendiary narrative that Black homosexuals are being targeted and are afraid for their lives. The article mentions Herrington by name but censors his mugshot. Even though the victim’s race is discussed repeatedly, including in the title, Herrington’s race is never mentioned.
“For a lot of gay people there, we’re scared,” said Braylyn Johnson, a Black former student at Ole Miss who identifies as a member of the LGBTQ community. “Especially for gay Black men. They’re scared. They’re terrified.”
…
“There are people who don’t want to come back to school in less that two weeks because of how scared they are,” she said.
Beyond the fear Lee’s killing has caused, his death has hit particularly hard because as a “Black, gay man in Mississippi” who frequently performed in drag under the name Jay Divaa, he was an inspiration to other queer people in Oxford, where the University of Mississippi is located, Johnson said — remembering her friend as always dressed to the nines in a full face of makeup.
…
“He wanted to make Oxford his home, and for him to do that, it was going to take him to be that advocate and to be that change to make it comfortable, not tolerated, for gay people to live here, comfortable for us to live here,” Johson said.
The author knows that most people will think Sheldon is a White person’s name and assume the killer is White. The article is intentionally trying to create a false perception.
In reality, the overwhelmingly vast majority of Black homicide victims in the LGBTQP+ community are killed by other Blacks.
Imagine if a large media outlet published the same narrative about the suspect and said, “Ole Miss students are living in fear after gay Black male arrested for murdering student.”
The next article is written by the same author but mainly focuses on the suspect. While the victim’s article mentions race and sexuality in the title, this article only describes the suspect as a “graduate” in the title. Once again, all pictures of the suspect are intentionally omitted. Only a picture of the victim is shown. The article points out that the victim is homosexual but does not mention that the suspect is also a homosexual.
Then, the author mentions an unrelated case where two White males allegedly shot and wounded a Black male. He lists the race of the White suspects in this unrelated case but censors the race of the Black suspect that his article is supposed to be about.
