New Editor-in-Chief Schewe's intro Editorial wrote

Though the practice of journalism operates within the limits of the availability of sources of information and deadlines, there is no excuse for not pursuing the most complete story that exists.

No? Then why did the Daily Cal deliberately keep out the races of the perpetrators of last week's anti-Muslim hate crime? They knew what the races were, and every single crime story prior to this one described the alleged attackers using color as a criteria. Here's the description:

One of the attackers is described as a male, 20 to 25 years old who was wearing a green crew-neck sweatshirt.

Another was described as a 20 to 21-year old male wearing a brown baseball cap, brown shirt, khaki shorts and a wallet chain.

If he takes off that baseball cap, we'll never find him! Here's the Police description:

Suspect #1: A black male age 20-25, 6'01", 195 lbs, with short black hair, a dark complexion, wearing a green crew-neck sweatshirt.

Suspect #2: A Hispanic male age 20-21, 5'08", 150 lbs, wearing a brown baseball cap, brown shirt, khaki shorts and a wallet-chain on his right side.

I don't think anyone can seriously deny that the Daily Cal self-censored itself in order to avoid writing a 'a minority person probably did this' during touchy times. The question is whether this is either a one-time decision to smooth over relations before going back to normal journalistic practice, or whether it's a leap into a brave new world where nothing bad happens if a minority did it. Probably the first one, but we'll see.

This was a bad test story to take out racial information. It's a hate crime, which is inherently based on race relations and cultural differences. Giving 'full context' requires access to all relevant contextual information. And there's a big difference between two Asian boys beating up a Muslim student, two African-American students, and one Hispanic and one African-American. It's like leaving out that the Birmingham firebombers were white! Not to mention the one-sidedness of going over the race and religion of the victim but not who did it. It's like saying to the victim 'we're happy to describe you and what about you makes you a target, but the identifying characteristics of your attackers, that's right out.' Or saying that it's perfectly okay to describe minority victims, but not when attackers happen to be minorities.

In any case, a self-defeating idea. Now readers, deprived of context, will fill in their own particular bias when they see a carefully undescribed crime perpetrator. I'll bet a lot of readers assumed ' Oh, they're covering for the two black men who committed that attack.' Now, that's an improvement in race relations...Email This Post!