Media tune out torture death of Arkansas boy
Damian J. Anderson
http://www.washtimes.com/nation/nation1.html
Media tune out torture death of Arkansas boy
Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 22, 1999
Most of the nation has not heard about two homosexual men who face the
death penalty in Arkansas, charged with raping and torturing a 13-year-old
boy to death last month.
The brutal crime against Prairie Grove, Ark., seventh-grader Jesse
Dirkhising -- who was raped repeatedly and suffocated with his own
underwear in the pre-dawn hours of Sept. 26 -- was reported by news
organizations in Arkansas and also covered by newspapers in Oklahoma
and Tennessee.
But the boy's death did not receive national media attention. Tim Graham,
director of media analysis for the Media Research Center, said he is
not surprised.
"Nobody wants to say anything negative about homosexuals. Nobody wants
to be seen on the wrong side of that issue," said Mr. Graham, who sees
"political correctness" at work.
But David Smith, spokesman for a major homosexual lobbying group,
the Human Rights Campaign, said Thursday of the Jesse Dirkhising case:
"This has nothing to do with gay people."
The muted press reaction to the Dirkhising slaying starkly contrasts
with coverage of the murder of Matthew Shepard, a homosexual University
of Wyoming freshman who was beaten to death last October.
Christopher D. Plumlee, deputy prosecuting attorney for Benton County,
Ark., who investigated Jesse's death, admits he was a "little surprised"
at the limited coverage this "horrible crime against a child" received.
Joshua Macave Brown, 22, and Davis Don Carpenter, 38, described as
homosexual "lovers" in a police affidavit, have both been charged with
capital murder and six counts of rape and are being held without bond
in connection with Jesse's death.
The accused killers pleaded not guilty at an arraignment earlier this
month and face another court date Dec. 8. Mr. Plumlee said their trial
is scheduled for April 10, 2000.
Mr. Carpenter was a friend of Jesse's parents, Tina Yates and Miles Yates
Jr., and the boy had been staying with the two men at their apartment in
Rogers, Ark., on weekends for two months prior to his death, Mr. Plumlee
said. The prosecutor said the child's family had been falsely told Jesse
helped out at a Rogers beauty salon Mr. Carpenter managed.
According to the affidavit, Mr. Brown told police that on the morning
of Sept. 26, he sneaked up on the boy, tied his hands behind his back,
placed his pair of undershorts in the teen's mouth and secured the
briefs with a bandana and duct tape. He said he blindfolded the youth,
bound him to a bed and repeatedly sodomized him.
Mr. Brown said he went to the kitchen to get a sandwich and that when he
returned to the bedroom, Jesse was not breathing. He alerted his roommate,
who called 911.
Asked about Mr. Carpenter's role during the crime, Mr. Brown said Mr.
Carpenter stood at the bedroom door and masturbated as he watched. Police
also recovered notes they believe implicate Mr. Carpenter in planning
the crime.
Mr. Plumlee would not speculate on why this slaying received such scant
coverage. But "this was murder and rape in an area that has a low crime
rate, a particularly low rate of violent crime. We generally don't have
crimes with this degree of brutality here," he said.
He added he sees local outrage at the "torture" Jesse endured. "But I
don't see outrage directed at homosexuals," he said.
News stories published about the crime, to date, have not indicated the
suspects are homosexuals.
Jack Stokes, director of employee publications for Associated Press,
confirmed Thursday that AP ran stories about the case on state and local
wires but not on its national wires. "I do not know why the story has not
moved nationally, but it's a continuing story, so that could change,"
he said late Thursday. AP last covered the story Oct. 11, when the two
suspects were arraigned.
By contrast, the day after Mr. Shepard's Oct. 8, 1998, beating in Wyoming,
the Associated Press national wire carried its first 400-word story
by staff writer E.N. Smith headlined: "Openly gay student critically
injured in Wyoming attack."
The next day, Oct. 10, AP produced a 700-word story with the headline:
"Gay student clings to life after savage beating." On Oct. 11, AP moved
a 500-word story headlined: "Call for tougher laws after attack on gay
student." A search through Associated Press on-line archives showed
the Shepard story was reported as a national story every day for a week
following the beating.
Barbara Levinson, a spokeswoman for "NBC Nightly News," said, "We did
not cover" the Dirkhising case. Given that the broadcast is only 30
minutes long, she said, "There are many crime stories that don't make
it on the air."
Another network spokeswoman said the story of Jesse's killing has not
been presented on "Today" or "Dateline NBC" either.
A spokeswoman for CNN said, "Our affiliate station in Atlanta was tracking
the story. But the week it happened, there was also Hurricane Floyd,
the nuclear power plant explosion in Japan, the London train wreck,
and the flare-up in East Timor."
The spokeswoman could not say definitively whether CNN reported anything
about the Arkansas case. She said the people who would know had already
left for the day.
Paul McMasters, national ombudsman for the Freedom Forum, a private media
foundation, acknowledged he had not heard about the Dirkhising murder
until Thursday when a reporter called and inquired. "I'm at a loss to
explain why a story like this didn't get more national play," he said.
"We don't know how many stories just like this one don't make it to the
national news."
One person angered that the Jesse Dirkhising killing has not received
wider coverage is former Louisiana state lawmaker David Duke, the one-time
Ku Klux Klan leader who describes himself as a "national white civil
rights activist."
Mr. Duke said Thursday the media should be covering the Dirkhising case
with the "same vigor" it reported Mr. Shepard's death.
"There has been no outrage and no candlelight vigils for Jesse
Dirkhising," even though the murder was "even more heinous than the
Shepard case because the victim was a child who was literally raped to
death by two male homosexuals," said Mr. Duke.
But Mr. Smith of Human Rights Campaign countered: "This is a desperate
political ploy and a comeback attempt by a failed neo-Nazi, who hasn't
won a major election since he was elected Grand Wizard."
--
Damian J. Anderson <dam...@unification.net> http://www.unification.net
Oberon
atrocities that happen to our brothers and sisters despite not being covered
extensively by the mainstream press. i get the tone that this article is
trying to say "See gay people do awful things too." I almost get the
feeling from this article (Which, by the way is republished illegally) that
someone is trying rally up some ant-gay sentiments. Why else would the
reporter subtley quote DAVID DUKE. I Curious why the reporter did not
inquire more into the comment by David Smith a Gay Rights lobbiest that
"This has nothing to do with gay people.".
Despite the reporter closing with the quote from Mr. Smith (we can only
assume Mr. David Smith as quoted before) noting that D. Duke's comment was
a political ploy; this is a shoddy peice of reporting and someone should
learn more critical reporting skills. I know many highschoolers who could
report a better balanced article. This is but a sorry story.
--
Oscar Wilde - "One should always be a little improbable."
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Damian J. Anderson <dam...@unification.net> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.04.99102...@www.unification.net...
Karen Horn
CNN is so full of it. I guarantee you if it were two homosexual
clergymen who did that to a kid, you can bet everyone with a satellite
dish from Nome Alaska to Calcutta would have heard about it.
But what else is to be expected from the Clinton News Network?
Karen
Mark Johnson
>I hope this was written and sent to make us all aware of the other
>atrocities that happen to our brothers and sisters despite not being covered
>extensively by the mainstream press.
He was making just the very obv point that political correctness
demands the media hush up anything which might hurt one of the current
agendas. The 90s have seen the 'gay agenda' go into full swing (hey -
whatever word I use here . . . can't win). So MS was front page news,
the stuff of posthumous tv magazine segments, and so on - and 'gays'
involved on the other side, as murderers, and of a child no less, just
would seem to give the lie to MS as martyr. That is, in other words,
homosexuals might be victims, and homosexuals might just as easily be
victimizers. You HAVE to silence the latter to make the former point -
if that's the agenda. The propaganda won't really even work, much less
be not nearly as effective, otherwise. And that's what you have to
confess the obv, here.
Peace.