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Jack McNulty
Ch. 11 DPD Story
Rad Field
Dawn Rizos
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11/20/03 Filtering the News is
Harmful.
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When we first heard about the armed robberies on Greenville
Avenue, it was not from
The Dallas Morning News (our only daily newspaper). It was from one of the victims who contacted DallasArena.com.
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JC:
Great Job! These pc pundits are dangerous in their own right. |
I put her in touch with Avi Adelman (www.BarkingDogs.org)
whose life work is cleaning up Greenville Avenue.
Molly subsequently e-mailed me with the following:
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Hello Sharon,
I appreciate your quick response this morning. Anyhow, I am the
individual
that was leaving the Barney Stone at
approximately 9:15 yesterday evening.
My friend, Jodie C,
and I were walking around the back to the
parking lot where we had parked the car. We were almost to our car
when 2
black males approximately 25-28 years of age were coming toward us,
put guns to our heads
and threatened to shoot us in the head....
Molly T |
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Avi Adelman got busy and got media and community attention to the robberies.
Unfortunately, it was just the beginning of a rash of muggings.
and
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'Fed
up with it'
Robberies cause many to keep closer tabs
on Lower Greenville
12:45 PM CST on Saturday, November 15, 2003
By GRETEL C. KOVACH / The Dallas
Morning News |
In neither article, did the reporters mention the appearance or ethnicity of the
muggers. Molly identified them as "2 black males" in her e-mail to me.
She most certainly advised the DMN reporters about what the
muggers looked like, but the reporter did not think it was relevant.
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JC to DMN's Gretel C.
Kovach and Steve Blow:
The Dallas Morning News must also take responsibility for these
crimes as the DMN DOES NOT even put in a partial
description of suspects when it is available to them.
As has been stated
before, ANY description of a suspect will at least put the public on a
higher alert and possible help in the apprehension of the criminals.
But the DMN, in its effort not to "offend" people, has decided to
make race an issue and not print the race of a still on -the-loose suspect
unless the DMN "feels" it can help.
And once again I am telling you any
description is better than nothing as you would agree to if it was you or
someone you knew who was a victim.
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Gretel C. Kovach
in response:
Thank you for responding,
hope you enjoyed the article.
I decided not to include details about the race of the suspects
because none of the victims had anything more than the vaguest of
descriptions. Publishing something that said "Be on the lookout for a
young black male" would have declared a huge portion of the Dallas
population as potential criminal suspects. Back when I attended the
Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University they taught us that
publishing such vague descriptions is unethical.
If
the police or victims are able to come up with a more detailed
description that could actually aid in identifying the suspects, I will
of course include it in any future stories. I am sorry if someone you
knew was a victim of these robberies; that is why I wanted to write the
story.
Sincerely,
Gretel C. Kovach
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JC was, and is still, correct. There is no reason not to have identified the
muggers as 2 Black males. It may be politically correct, but it is dangerously
uninformative.
| That was interesting, but there apparently is a new Code at the DMN. It
may have been imposed since Belo felt it necessary to import a Flower Child from
Arizona to run things at our only daily newspaper, but it may just be
coincidental. |
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Kim Norton:
Thank you for the honesty about the Lower Greenville crimes
& the way the DMN behaves. It doesn't matter what race anyone is.
However,
why omit it for fear of offending?
Kudos to you for fighting to keep
truth in the media. Without people like you the citizens of Dallas &
those who patronize the city would never hear more than what they feel we
should know. |
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Then Wednesday, the DMN posted a horrifying story on its web site about a string of
gang assaults on patrons at the CityPlace Loew's Theatre.
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Who knows if we would ever know about them without the internet. The
stories were circulating on the internet before the theatre or CityPlace or the DPD were
advising the public about the dangerous situation. |
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P.D.
Sterling:
As an aside, there was an armed hold up at the
Post Office on Oak Lawn. DPD doesn't
know anything about it because it's a Federal
thing. yeesh! |
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Mob attacks at Dallas
theater raise safety concerns
02:08 PM CST on Wednesday,
November 19, 2003
By KIMBERLY DURNAN / Dallas Web Staff
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A mob of at least 20 youths has attacked
moviegoers outside the Loews Cineplex at Cityplace at least three times
since early October, prompting a police investigation and increased patrols
in the business district. . . . |
Nowhere in the story does the reporter identify the ethnicity of the gang
members.
Do you think they are Black because CityPlace is near Roseland Homes (a DHA
housing project)? Not necessarily. They may be Hispanic from some
accounts.
By withholding the information, people hearing about the assaults may assume
they are area kids. Others are claiming the gangs are taking DART light
rail into the CityPlace station to do these beatings.
Do you really think 20 hoodlums who just beat up another human being are
going to run back to the DART station and wait for the next train and load up
under camera scrutiny to go home? It could happen, but I doubt it.
Since the Greenville Avenue stories had already shown a pattern of the DMN not
identifying the ethnicity of the suspects, I contacted Kimberly Durnan about her
not mentioning the ethnicity of the gangs. This was our exchange:
From: Sharon
Boyd
To: Kimberly Durnan
Subject: CityPlace Assaults
Ms. Durnan:
Thank you for an honest report.
Still, why aren't you identifying the ethnicity of
the attackers? |
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From: Durnan, Kimberly
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 2:51 PM
To: Sharon Boyd
Subject: CityPlace Assaults
Ms. Boyd:
Thanks for the email. I
grappled with whether or not to name the race of the
attackers and victims and eventually decided against it. We don't identify
criminal suspects by race unless we have additional descriptive information
such as a tattoo, facial hair, height and weight. I didn't have any of that.
Also, victims said there were no racial slurs or anything to make them
think the attacks were raced based.
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From: Sharon
Boyd
To: Kimberly Durnan
Subject: CityPlace Assaults
Problem is -- most people are
assuming they are Black. As I understand it from
contacts in East Dallas, the gang is Hispanic. This is important. Not
only to the victims, but to future victims. Hair color and tattoos
are not big items when you are talking about a
gang. It's hard to see any detail when multiple
attackers are involved.
Guess what I'm writing about tonight on DallasArena.com -- the way your
paper continues to MANAGE the news we have to get from the internet
rather than our only daily newspaper. |
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How dare they withhold information from
citizens of this city?
Unfortunately, Wednesday night's report on Ch. 11 about the CityPlace
gang attacks only differed from the DMN report by saying there were 6 attacks
rather than 3.
Ch. 11 didn't tell the ethnicity of the gangs either.
Why?
What has happened to us that people who are supposed to report the news think we
"can't handle it"? Are they all suddenly Jack Nicholson responding to Tom
Cruise? |
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Stan Aten:
On Wed (11/12/03, just before 4 pm), I was approaching the DART
Cedars Station. I had checked the clock on my
cell phone because I was
concerned the train would be early.
A Red Line train
from the south arrived, and a number of
kids exited the train followed by a
swarm of DART police. The police ordered the kids to get on the ground and
spread their legs. About a dozen kids
sprawled on the ground. The police searched
them and wrote a few tickets.
At 4 pm the next day, there was a
large presence of DART police at the same station.
Kids got off the train, and the
police chased
them as they exited the train.
I asked around and got the following:
Most of the kids were from the DISD
Alternative School. There have
been a lot of reports in
recent months of teenagers harassing and robbing riders on the DART
trains.
This problem got out of control
because you almost never see a DART officer on a
train even to check tickets.
Things
are calmed down this
week; however, I never saw this story in The
Dallas Morning News. |
I am sick of the local media MANAGING our news.
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