The Media's Crime Culpability

They Won't State the Obvious and It's Costing Lives

The New York Times had a large feature on Thursday about Philadelphia breaking it’s record for the most homicides in a single year.

PHILADELPHIA — The 300th killing of the year in Philadelphia took the life of Lameer Boyd, an 18-year-old father-to-be who was gunned down one July night on a sidewalk. Over the weeks that followed, a grandmother was shot in the neck, a popular singer was killed in front of his house and a woman was killed at a front-porch cookout.

With her death, the 322nd of the year, the number of homicides in Philadelphia was on track toward becoming the highest in police records, passing the bleak milestone set just last year. So far this year, more than 1,400 people in the city have been shot, hundreds of them fatally, a higher toll than in the much larger cities of New York or Los Angeles. Alarms have sounded about gun violence across the country over the past two years, but Philadelphia is one of the few major American cities where it truly is as bad as it has ever been.

It’s absolutely horrific what’s happening in the City of Brotherly Love but what’s shocking is how The Times chooses to cover the matter.