Media Tricked into Covering Black on Black Violence

Via Stacy McCain: Media’s Anti-White Bias Makes Houston Drive-By Shooting National News

When 7-year-old Jazmine Barnes was killed in a drive-by shooting in Houston Dec. 30, the story “captured nationwide attention,” because Jazmine’s family claimed that the shooter was a white man:

The teen and her mother described the suspect as a white man with blue eyes, a thin build and no beard. They say he “looked sick” with sunken cheekbones and a pale face with a “five o’clock shadow.” He was wearing a black hoodie.

CNN jumped on the story — RAAAAACISM! — and the usual crew of #BlackLivesMatter hate-hustlers leaped into action, raising money and sending out incendiary tweets. Unfortunately for the purveyors of this narrative, it was false. The white man in the red truck that Jazmine’s family had seen wasn’t the shooter, but an innocent guy who was himself caught in the line of fire. The actual perpetrators were driving a KIA.

Murder suspects Larry Woodruffe (left) and Eric Black Jr. (right).

KIA, the car of choice of drug lords?

Larry Woodruffe, 24, was the shooter, and was riding with Eric Black Jr., 20, according to the police, when Woodruffe spotted the vehicle that Jazmine’s mother was driving and, apparently, mistook it for the vehicle of one of their drug-gang rivals. Woodruffe opened fire with a 9mm pistol and he and Black didn’t realize they had targeted an innocent family until they saw news reports the next day. So the “white killer” angle that made this story a subject of “nationwide attention” was false, and now the media that exploited the death of Jazmine Barnes to gin up a firestorm of racial fear will now drop the story entirely.

Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, except in court, where it is largely taken at face value. It's perfectly natural for people to misperceive things, and to insert their biases into their version of what happened. CNN should know that and temper their reporting accordingly. Activists are gonna do what they do, although they should show some shame (but won't).

Linked by EBL in Princess Mononoke and Lady Eboshi and Static Electric Day.