Want a Pass from the Media? Call Yourself 'Mohammed'

Some crime stories the media relish. Others they resist covering. In February of this year, a drunken peckerwood named Adam Purinton shot and killed an Indian engineer in suburban Kansas City thinking the man was an Iranian. The media nationwide ran with this story and shamelessly tied the shooting to the rise of Donald Trump. The Kansas City Star posted more than 50 articles on this one crime alone.

Three years earlier, the Star widely covered the story of a highway shooter who terrorized the metro for more than a month, hitting at least a dozen cars and wounding several people. Then the police arrested the shooter. The fact that he was black dimmed the enthusiasm in local newsrooms. The fact that his first name was “Mohammed” killed it.

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