A sad story from STLtoday about a woman killed in a hit-and-run on Broadway near a popular eating establishment. Another man was hit and sent to the hospital.
One would think people would be offering condolences or perhaps getting out the word to look for the car. Unfortunately, Saint Louis comments has a one track mind.
Greg Hall has a problem with what is being reported here. The story makes no mention of the race of the people in the car which killed Amber Wood, yet he knows and there is a massive coverup! Even in his own experience, Greg has had dealings with the white community being "thrown under the bus" when it comes to the reporting in our city. In fact, he was a witness to a murder!
Now, I don't know if Greg Hall actually witnessed anything. There is a chance he did since he doesn't sound too crazy-pants when talking about it, but it shows he has a complete lack of understanding on how police and news writing works. I'll explain this to you in the best way I can...
Police take information from the scene and witnesses. Police decide what can be release to the public and what can't. Police give what they can release to the public to the news people. News people slam that information into the inverted pyramid and knock off to the closest liquor hole to get a good base drunk going before happy hour starts.
Also, I want to recant my earlier statement that Greg doesn't sound insane when talking about being the witness to a murder. Added to that, I would like to know what the fuck Greg was doing taking photos of people at a time of night that the buses don't run. Or was he taking pictures of the murder victim? Both seem like they were spit from the gaping maw of stupidity. I'm going to call STL's finest and have them contact Greg again because if this dipshit comes near me, I'm going to sue him as well.
So Greg knows the people driving were black. It's not mentioned in the story, but there is another news organization playing by their own rules.
Holy shit! STLtoday done been scooped!
Yes, it's true. The local Fox affiliate also reported this tidbit and included a description of the alleged perpetrators. Good thing, too because we may never have known to look out for two black males.
What? No, that's all the description we have. Black males. Nothing more. Now get out there and find these guys!
STLtoday is not a bad news site. Their site designer needs eye surgery and seeing a Yahoo! powered search bar makes me self flagellate for them because I assume no one there has the proper amount of shame, but their reporting isn't terrible. Hell, being a news reporter is easy. There is a list of facts you get, snag a quote, fluff up some transitions and call it a day.
Also, let's remember that we are getting a witness description after leaving a bar late at night and looking to a car speeding fast enough to knock someone eighty feet. I'm going to say that witness description isn't going to be the most accurate when it come to identifying the people in the car.
And every once in a while, STLtoday defends their positions. Take this for example:
Let me, once again, explain some journalism for those of you who found functional alcoholism through cheaper and less mentally painful means. A stylebook is a journalist dictionary. There are specific ways to write things and you must adhere to them at all times for the sake of uniformity in writing.
For example, some people might write Saint Louis, MO. Some may write St. Louis, Mo. It's the same thing presented in two different ways. A stylebook is what tells you the correct way that everyone should be writing. In the military, we use the Associated Press stylebook.
However, many news organizations have internal guides specific to their territories. In Iraq, I was on COB Basra in the city of Basrah, Iraq. No, I didn't misspell one, that was in our internal stylebook. You have to have rules specific to your organization so everyone you work with is writing the same way, and not every stylebook is going to have city/town/ordinance specific stuff. They are just going to cover the more widely used terms and let the news organizations figure out how they want to write about the small things no one outside the city limits would truly care about.
Trust me, without this uniformity, news reporting would be even worse than it is. At least with the stylebook you can read yellow journalism and overt fear mongering with a single cadence.
So STLtoday's decision to not mention race unless necessary to track down a fugitive makes sense to me. In fact, I applaud them for it. It's unnecessary and causes idiots on the internet to say stupid things. And no, the race wasn't necessary because "black" is not enough. This city has a gaggle of blacks, whites, bosnians, you name it. Saying the suspect is black isn't going to help anything. It's like saying the dog was brown. Well holy shit guys, we know there's only four brown dogs in the universe, so we have them now!
However, the description of the car is great. Keep your eye out for a gray Pontiac Grand Am or Grand Prix with person shaped front end damage. If you can see them from those ivory towers of yours.
This is a terrible thing to happen to a person, but sometimes that's just the way it works. You do your best to get ahead in life, and suddenly, out of nowhere comes STLtoday making it difficult for you to be racist.
The funny thing about all the comments I've been seeing about the impending race wars and the "Us vs. Them" mentalities is that I do believe there could be a race war coming. And I'm fairly sure it's a stupid white person who is going to set it off.
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