Update: 100 blacks beat white couple, media bury attack

100 blacks beat white couple, media bury attack

 A few comments from four pages.

Via Sister Anne

A disgrace 

In a previous life, I was in the Navy, based in Hampton Roads, at two separate bases as well as on a ship. I lived in Virginia Beach, and I subscribed to The Pilot.Via Sister Anne

After reading that you “hid” the story of the beating at Church and Brambleton for two weeks, were I still a resident there and a subscriber, I would have canceled my subscription.

You are as awful as The New York Times. You should all hang your heads in disgrace.

Ed Higginbotham
Mableton, Ga.

Futility and ignorance

Washington’s column describes an incident in which a crowd of black teens beat two white reporters. Washington puzzles over their treatment by police. However, the incident was unreported and kept under wraps for two weeks by The Pilot.

Gingerly digging for answers, Washington asks whether the case was racially motivated. That tells us a lot about the credulity of the journalism community, and the futility of the police. How long will the mainstream media and the police continue to cover up the disquieting truth of what’s happening in our cities?

No one is in a better position to answer for the media than Washington herself. Facts, however uncomfortable they may be, are nevertheless facts, and ignoring the painful ones doesn’t make them inconsequential, it just encourages more of the same.

Are newspapers primarily vehicles for commercial advertising, or is their intended purpose to report and analyze events affecting the communities they serve, irrespective of concerns other than the truth?

Norton Rubenstein
Richmond

Blame The Pilot

As someone who has been railing against the liberal media for too long to be surprised about something like this, I’m sorry to say, I am still surprised

What has The Pilot got against the truth? You’ll report endlessly about Trayvon Martin (when you have very few facts), but not once report on your own employees being beaten by a mob?

I do notice that your publisher was just confirmed by the Obama administration to a post that will surely grant him a lifetime of comfort. Too bad the same can’t be said for those who have to stay in Norfolk

Don’t blame anyone else when the city is in flames. That falls on you.

Stuart Schwartz
Norfolk

In the aftermath of a beating

Re: “A beating at Church and Brambleton” (Michelle Washington op-ed column, May 1): A mob of teenagers beats two adults driving near downtown Norfolk, and this didn’t merit a story in the newspaper? My suspicion is that the editors decided they didn’t want to run a story that cast a poor light on race relations in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting.

The blame falls entirely on the perpetrators. Having gotten out the car and then having been attacked by antisocial, hate-filled young men, Dave Forster had the right to defend himself if the beating appeared to be something severe, and Marjon Rostami equally had the right to defend Forster or herself.

What if Forster or Rostami had been armed? Someone might have been shot. While that would be unfortunate, it would be better than either Forster or Rostami suffering severe injury or death, which could have easily happened. They are very lucky they merely suffered enough pain to keep them out of work for a week. What if they had been walking from the theater to their car when this happened? I recommend they buy a weapon and learn how to carry it responsibly, or stay far away from such situations.

Consider how this case parallels the Trayvon Martin case. Like Forster, Zimmerman should have stayed in his car. But he made the decision to check out a suspicious person, just as Forster made a decision to check out the rock throwing. Both did something unwise but legal. Zimmerman claims next that he was attacked by a 17-year old, and the beating was most definitely severe. Unfortunately for Zimmerman, he didn’t have Rostami there as a witness.

In both of these cases, the perpetrators were black and the victims were white (or “white Hispanic” as the media have labeled Zimmerman).

The races are not important, other than to note that there are a lot of troubled black youth in our society. You can be white or Asian or Hispanic, or a combination of all three (as I am) and be troubled, and you can certainly be black and be a wonderful, responsible person. But the antisocial nature of much of what transpires with black youth today (violent and misogynistic music is one symptom) is a real problem.

David Swain
Chesapeake