Category Archives: Journolism

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Another dead in the Philadelphia Badlands Will The Philadelphia Inquirer actually tell us who he was, and why he was killed?

I’ve said it dozens of times before:  The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless the victim is an ‘innocent,’ someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl.

Well, an “innocent” was killed on Friday, so yeah, we’re getting a lot more about her from what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer:[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.

Parks and Recreation worker killed by stray bullet in West Philadelphia

Tiffany Fletcher was sweeping outside a recreation center when she was caught in the middle of a gun battle, police said.

by Robert Moran | Friday, September 9, 2022

A 41-year-old woman was killed by a stray bullet Friday afternoon while working for the city at a recreation center in the Mill Creek section of West Philadelphia, police said.

Just before 1:30 p.m., the woman — identifed late Friday night by the city as Tiffany Fletcher — was sweeping outside the Mill Creek Recreation Center on the 4700 block of Brown Street when a gun battle erupted and she was struck in the stomach, police said.

She was rushed by police to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead Friday evening.

Police Capt. John Walker said a 14-year-old boy — who allegedly was seen dropping a gun near the shooting scene — was in custody as part of the investigation. The gun was recovered by police.

Mayor Jim Kenney and Parks and Recreation Kathryn Ott Lovell issued statements praising Fletcher and decrying the gun violence.

Perhaps Mr Kenney shouldn’t have linked the city’s Parks and Recreation Twitter site, because, at least as of 8:30 AM EDT on Saturday, all it has are nice, positive tweets showing, and nothing on Miss Fletcher.

For Inquirer reporter Robert Moran, the 482 words in his story constitutes a long one. A reporter who covers “breaking news at night,” his stories are very frequently of the three or four paragraph variety, noting that the Philadelphia Police Department have reported an unknown male was shot and killed in one of the neighborhoods in the city’s combat zones. This time, he had more to work with, because the victim was an innocent, not just another gang-banger or wannabe.

There were nine total paragraphs about Miss Fletcher in Mr Moran’s story, and I would not be surprised if there’s another about her later today in the newspaper. Much further down, I saw this:

Later Friday night in the city’s Fairhill section, an unidentified man was fatally wounded in a shooting on the 3100 block of North Front Street. He was transported by private vehicle to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 9:34 p.m. Police reported no arrests in that case.

On Friday, December 11, 2020, columnist Helen Ubiñas published an article in the Inquirer entitled “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.”

The last time we published the names of those lost to gun violence, in early July, nearly 200 people had been fatally shot in the city.

Just weeks before the end of 2020, that number doubled. More than 400 people gunned down.

By the time you read this, there will only be more.

Even in a “normal” year, most of their stories would never be told.

At best they’d be reduced to a handful of lines in a media alert:

“A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and was pronounced at 8:12 p.m. The scene is being held, no weapon recovered and no arrest.”

That’s it. An entire life ending in a paragraph that may never make the daily newspaper.

Since Miss Ubiñas published her column, the Inky has changed its editorial policies, and now readers will no longer be told that the victim was “a 21-year-old black male,” but just a 21-year-old male.” And in Mr Moran’s story, this victim was reduced to even less than Miss Ubiñas wrote, to “an unidentified man”, though Mr Moran normally adds more information if he’d has it.

The Fairhill neighborhood is one of those listed prominently as part of the “Philadelphia Badlands.” Of course, once the Google Maps designation of “Philadelphia Badlands” was spotted, the Inky waxed wroth:

‘Philadelphia Badlands’ label on Google Maps latest controversy over neighborhood names

A Twitter user who spotted the name called it problematic: “to see Google kind of endorse that really did not strike me the right way.”

Philadelphia Badlands. Photo via Philadelphia Inquirer Click to enlarge.

by Patricia Madej | Updated: May 2, 2019A label for the “Philadelphia Badlands” on Google Maps drew ire online this week, adding another layer to the long-standing conversation over neighborhood names and boundaries, and their uses in technology.

A Twitter account, @RITTSQU, shared an image Tuesday that showed the name labeled near the Fairhill neighborhood in North Philadelphia, calling it “a racist new twist.” The post quickly garnered attention, and by Thursday, the name did not appear to be on the map, though a search for “Philadelphia Badlands” still brought results.

Using “Philadelphia Badlands” in Google Maps’ directions feature will take users to Sixth Street and Allegheny Avenue, while also suggesting Fairhill, North Philadelphia, and Kensington. It’s unclear how long the name had existed on Google Maps, when or why it was removed, or how it was added. Google did not respond to requests for comment.

Note that North Front Street is shown on that Google Maps photo of the Badlands. The 3100 block extends for three blocks south of East Allegheny Avenue, also shown on the map. You don’t get any more Badlands than that!

I’m not sure why calling a murderous neighborhood the Badlands is racist; it’s a designation spawned by the numbers, not color.

West Philly, where Miss Fletcher was killed, is not in the Badlands, but, if we do something really radical like tell the truth, West Philly has its own serious crime problem.

There’s a question not often asked these days: was Miss Fletcher’s life somehow more important than the unknown man killed on North Front Street? Being where the shooting happened, there’s a decent chance he was another gang banger, killed by a banger from a rival gang, but we don’t know that; he could easily have been a completely innocent man, perhaps an intended robbery victim, or could he have been someone’s boyfriend shot by a jealous, spurned suitor? Perhaps he was a buyer in a drug deal gone bad.

This is the problem with the journolists[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading of the Inquirer: they don’t do very much actual journalism when it comes to city homicides. We get to read the stories about the innocents and the cute white girls killed, but most of the homicide stories are simply not pursued.

This is really the job of the Inquirer, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, because the other important news medium in Philly, the television news stations, are in the business of presenting stories which happen right away, stories which have a strong visual component. Only newspapers have the capacity to dig more deeply, to present more information than people can get from a thirty-second story on WPVI-TV; that’s just the nature of the different media forms. And with the switch to a mostly digital format, newspapers are no longer stuck with assigned story length, save in the actual print editions.

Who was the unidentified 21-year-old man killed in Fairhill? Why was he killed? What family were left to mourn his passing? The Inky may, may! delve into the story of the 14-year-old (alleged) shooter in the Mill Creek Rec Center gun battle, perhaps telling us about the other (alleged) members of the gangs which fought it out, though that story might just be too politically incorrect for publication.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Everything about #Monkeypox is built on lies.

American novelist and literary critic Mary McCarthy once said of playwright Lillian Hellman, “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” While not everything the newspaper I have frequently mocked as The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. publishes is a lie, enough of the truth is withheld or shaded to make much of what is published questionable, to say the least.

I guess that it shouldn’t be a surprise when the #woke[2]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading and the politically correct jump through circus hoops to avoid telling the truth. The truly sad thing about it is that anyone with eyes and ears can see that they’re jumping through those hoops.

I had ignored this story in The Philadelphia Inquirer the first time I saw it; the headline made it seem like just another one of the same, when the Inky complained that too few black residents were getting the COVID-19 vaccines, as though racism was the problem, when the vaccines were readily available in black neighborhoods, but the local population were simply not as enthusiastic about taking them. Now, its Monkeypox:

Black Philadelphians are at higher risk of monkeypox but get just a fraction of vaccine doses

City health officials acknowledged they have failed to reach a population that accounts for 55% of the city’s 203 reported cases.

by Jason Laughlin and Kasturi Pananjady | Friday, August 18, 2022

Black Philadelphians account for more than half of Philadelphia’s monkeypox cases, data released Thursday showed, but received less than a quarter of the city’s vaccine doses, an alarming disparity in the midst of a fast-spreading virus.

Despite outreach to the Black community, city health officials acknowledged they have failed to reach a population that accounts for 55% of the city’s 203 reported cases.

“You hate to say something hasn’t worked, but these numbers aren’t where we want them,” said Cheryl Bettigole, the city health commissioner.

Philadelphia’s population breakdown, without separating Hispanics, who can be of any race, is 41.36% black, 39.33% white, 7.42% Asian, 7.27% another race, and 4.26% bi-racial. With 55% of the diagnosed monkeypox cases being among black Philadelphians, out of just 203 total, out of a guesstimated total population of 1,619,355, the difference is really statistically insignificant. The total infected population are a whopping 0.0001253585532511401% of the city.

The poor vaccination rates could stem from factors such as fear of stigmatization among the Black LGBTQ community, poor access to doses, and the same distrust and skepticism of health-care systems that hampered efforts to persuade more Black Philadelphians to get fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

“The fact that they made [monkeypox] look like a gay disease is just generating more distrust toward that system, because it’s ultimately not,” said Jazmyn Henderson, an activist with ACT UP, an HIV and AIDS advocacy group. “People know that it’s not a STI [sexually transmitted infection].”

Sex has proven to be the most common way the virus is transmitted, which is why health officials are focusing on men who have had sexual contact with numerous or anonymous male partners. But although more rare, it is possible to spread monkeypox through any kind of extended contact with the painful rashes and lesions it can cause.

So, the Inky went through all of that to tell us that it’s not a sexually transmitted infection, but then tells us, in the very next paragraph, that the most common way it has been transmitted through sex. How common is “most common”?

Monkeypox has been spreading primarily through skin-to-skin contact during sex among gay and bisexual men, public health officials say. About 98% of patients who provided demographic information to clinics identified as men who have sex with men, according to the CDC. But public health officials have repeatedly emphasized that anyone can catch the disease through physical contact with someone who has it or contaminated materials such as bedsheets and towels.

So, “most common” actually means ‘almost all.’ Why wouldn’t the government, and Inquirer writers just tell the plain truth? When Jazmyn Henderson, an activist with ACT UP, an HIV and AIDS advocacy group, said, “The fact that they made [monkeypox] look like a gay disease is just generating more distrust toward that system, because it’s ultimately not,” he was lying to us, because, as can be gleaned from the description of him by the Inky, he has a very definite bias to support.

It doesn’t even make sense for Mr Henderson to lie about that; admitting that it is an infection spread not just “most common(ly)”, but very nearly entirely by homosexual males would lessen the demand for the vaccines among normal people, thus leaving more available for homosexual males.

Much further down, the Inquirer article notes that in Philly, vaccines have primarily been made available through the city’s monkeypox hotline and to patients of several LGBTQ clinics, places which one would not expect to somehow discriminate against blacks, so it isn’t as though the vaccine, when available, is somehow being withheld from racial minority populations; it has been a matter of who chooses to try to get vaccinated. Further, the city wants to team with businesses like Philly’s two bathhouses, an obvious place for the disease to be spread, and other places like pharmacies to host vaccination clinics, though with the vaccine in somewhat short supply, I fail to see how expanding the number of places it is available helps. Perhaps, just perhaps, what wasn’t mentioned, is that the city’s two homosexual “bathhouses” ought to be places where the very, very politically incorrect message, “Hey, promiscuous homosexual sex is risky for monkeypox” should be shouted out, but we all know that you’re just not allowed to say that.

Here’s where the reporting really shows the Inky’s politically correct suppression of the truth:

The data released Thursday by the Philadelphia Department of Public Health offer the first detailed look at who in the city has been infected by monkeypox, and who has been vaccinated for it. The data show 87% of cases have been reported in cisgender men. Three-fourths of infections have been in people ages 20 to 39. The racial disparities, though, are the most concerning indicators.

The chart at the right, taken from the city’s posted data on Sunday, August 20, 2022, sjows us that out of 203 known cases, while yes, 87% are among “cisgender” males, another 10% are from “unknown”, meaning that the data are incomplete. If you just read that 87% were from “cisgender males,” you might be subconsciously assume that the other 13% were among female victims, but that isn’t the case. With 177 cases among “cisgender males” plus 20 more among a population whose sex was not reported, that’s a total of 197, out of 203 total cases, 97.04%, leaving only four cases which could be among real women, fake males, fake females, and some other “gender identity”. The city didn’t report those numbers, and the Inquirer, while it did link the data, kind of hoped you wouldn’t really check it out.

It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it was definitely an attempt to obscure the truth. Article author Jason Laughlin could have written, “among the 183 reported cases in which the sex of the infected person was known, 96.72% were among ‘cisgender’ males,” but that would have told a truth that his editors at the Inquirer would not have wanted told.

Henderson, a trans Black woman, said Black men who have sex with men may still identify as heterosexual.

Translation: they are lying not only to others, but to themselves.

“Identifying as gay, identifying as trans, all of that is very stigmatized,” she said. “I didn’t realize how stigmatized trans women are until I became one.”

For this reason, Henderson has urged public health officials to stop emphasizing that monkeypox is a virus that primarily afflicts gay men, she said. She felt it would discourage gay, bisexual, and trans Black men from seeking out the vaccine. Being seen walking into an LGBTQ-focused health center could damage a man’s reputation in his community, she said.

“If it’s someone who knows you and knows where you hang out,” she said, “that business is going to be everywhere.”

Well, it’s certainly true that if you are seen walking into a health center which caters to homosexuals, and someone who knows you sees it, that information is going to spread among your neighborhood. But Mr Henderson, apparently like the Inquirer, wants to soft-peddle the facts, because political correctness is really much more important than the disease itself.

Everything here is being built on lies. It’s built on the lie that while monkeypox can be spread by contact other than sexual, it’s not a sexually transmitted infection despite the fact that around 98% of the cases are due to promiscuous homosexual male activity. It’s built on the lie that this is not an almost entirely homosexual male disease, because the left do not wish to stigmatize homosexual males. I can understand a dedicated activist like Mr Henderson telling lies to support his causes, but the credentialed media, a newspaper which purports to be telling readers the truth, should not go along with the lies.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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You in a heap o’ trouble!

Meet J’Lynn Hersey! Just four weeks after his 18th birthday, young Mr Hersey managed to rack up an impressive list of criminal charges:

  • KRS §508.010 Assault, First Degree, a Class B felony, 1 count
  • KRS §512.020 Criminal Mischief, First Degree, a Class D felony, 3 counts
  • KRS §512.030 Criminal Mischief, Second Degree, a Class A misdemeanor, 2 counts
  • KRS 512.040 Criminal Mischief, Third Degree, a Class B misdemeanor, 2 counts
  • KRS §508.060 Wanton Endangerment, First Degree, a Class D felony, 5 counts
  • KRS §520.095 Fleeing or Evading Police via Motor Vehicle, First Degree, a Class D felony, 1 count
  • KRS §520.095Fleeing or Evading Police on Foot, First Degree, a Class D felony, 1 count
  • Leaving the Scene of an Accident, Failure to Render Aid or Assistance, 1 count
  • No Operator’s License, Moped, 1 count
  • Failure to Appear, Citation for Misdemeanor
    • KRS §508.010 Assault, First Degree, a Class B felony, 1 count
    • KRS §508.060 Wanton Endangerment, First Degree, a Class D felony, 2 counts
    • KRS §527.100 Possession of a Handgun by a Minor, a Class A misdemeanor for a first offense, Class D felony for a subsequent offense, 2 counts
    • KRS 512.040 Criminal Mischief, Third Degree, a Class B misdemeanor, 2 counts

Under KRS §532.060, the sentence for a Class B felony is not less than ten (10) years nor more than twenty (20) years imprisonment, and the sentence for a Class D felony is not less than one (1) year nor more than five (5) years imprisonment. Under KRS §532.090, the sentence for a Class A misdemeanor is imprisonment for a term not to exceed twelve (12) months.

Young Mr Hersey could be spending a good, long time as a guest of the Commonwealth, at least if Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn doesn’t use ‘mediation’ to let him off lightly. It would seem that young Mr Hersey, if he is guilty of the charges against him — and he is innocent until proven guilty — has a serious lack of respect for the law:

18-year-old faces charges for two recent shootings in Lexington, police say

by Alex Acquisto | Friday, August 19, 2022 | 7:47 AM EDT

J’Lynn Hersey, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

A young man arrested earlier this month for a shooting on East Short Street has been charged with crimes related to another shooting.J’Lynn Hersey, 18, has been charged in a shooting that occurred on Aug. 11 in the 800 block of Nickwood Trail and left one man injured, the Lexington Police Department announced Thursday.

Hersey was previously taken into custody and charged in a shooting on East Short Street near Elm Tree Lane on Aug. 12. In that incident, he allegedly fired multiple shots from his car at another vehicle and then fled from police on foot.

Around 9:10 p.m. on Aug. 11, officers responded to a shots fired call on Nickwood Trail. Police arrived to find a 27-year-old man suffering from a gunshot wound. He was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries, police said.

In addition to the charges stemming from the shooting on East Short Street, Hersey has been charged with first-degree assault, two counts of wanton endangerment, three counts of first-degree criminal mischief, two counts of second-degree criminal mischief, and two counts of third-degree criminal mischief.

What my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal chose not to publish Mr Hersey’s mugshot, but WKYT-TV, Channel 27, showed it, as did WTVQ-TV, Channel 36, WLEX-TV, Channel 18, and the city’s press release. Despite the McClatchy Mugshot Policy’s[1]McClatchy Mugshot Policy: Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean … Continue reading concern about ‘disproportionate harm to people of color,’ the people of Lexington knew what Mr Hersey looked like. The newspaper claims a daily readership — not circulation — of 159,826, which assumes that three people read each copy, while the total number of households of the three television stations which showed Mr Hersey’s mugshot was for the 6:00 PM newscast is 95,000.[2]Calculated as an 18.7% ‘share,’ where one rating point equals 5,082 homes. The Herald-Leader did not keep readers from knowing that the suspect is black. And let’s tell the very politically incorrect truth here: anyone who read the suspect’s first name, J’Lynn, simply assumed that he is black.

I asked, just yesterday, if The Philadelphia Inquirer’s policy of concealing race from news stories doesn’t actually contribute to the stereotype that most criminals are black. In Philly, it seems like they are! But as I showed here and here and here and here, just over the last month, a lot of criminal suspects in Lexington are white. By concealing mugshots, the Herald-Leader just might be strengthening the stereotype that they are trying to kill.

Back to Mr Hersey: does anyone really believe that this guy — assuming that the charges against him are valid — is really a candidate to be reformed? Or is he more likely to commit other violent crimes after he gets out of prison? We can’t know that, in advance, but we do know one thing: as long as he’s behind bars, he won’t be shooting up Lexington’s streets. And the next time he does shoot up the city’s streets, someone could wind up stone cold graveyard dead.

References

References
↑1 McClatchy Mugshot Policy: Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever. Beyond the personal impact, inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness. In fact, some police departments have started moving away from taking/releasing mugshots as a routine part of their procedures.

To address these concerns, McClatchy will not publish crime mugshots — online, or in print, from any newsroom or content-producing team — unless approved by an editor. To be clear, this means that in addition to photos accompanying text stories, McClatchy will not publish “Most wanted” or “Mugshot galleries” in slide-show, video or print.

  • Is there an urgent threat to the community?
  • Is this person a public official or the suspect in a hate crime?
  • Is this a serial killer suspect or a high-profile crime?

If an exception is made, editors will need to take an additional step with the Pub Center to confirm publication by making a note in the ‘package notes‘ field in Sluglife.

↑2 Calculated as an 18.7% ‘share,’ where one rating point equals 5,082 homes.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer conceals a truth that everyone already knows Is the Inky actually perpetuating a stereotype it wishes to avoid?

We have noted, many times before, that The Philadelphia Inquirer censors the news because publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes demands it. But it has to be asked: does their deliberate censorship actually reinforce the stereotype they are trying to avoid?

‘I’m grateful to be alive.’ Victim of West Philly rec center shooting heals as three accused gunmen face charges.

Tahmir Pinckney, Azyear Sutton-Walker, and Marlon Spurell, who are all 22 years old, were arraigned overnight Thursday on charges including attempted murder and jailed on $3 million bail each.

by Chris Palmer and Mensah M. Dean | Thursday, August 18, 2022 | 1:15 PM EDT

Photo via 6ABC News Click to enlarge.

Three of the men accused of opening fire during a drive-by shooting outside a West Philadelphia rec center this week — an incident that left five people wounded, two of them critically — have been charged with crimes including attempted murder, aggravated assault, and conspiracy, court records show.Tahmir Pinckney, Azyear Sutton-Walker, and Marlon Spurell, who are all 22 years old, were arraigned overnight Thursday and jailed on $3 million bail each, court records show. All were being represented by the Defender Association, which declined to comment Thursday morning.

Police said the men were among six people who began shooting out of a white Dodge Durango around 7 p.m. Tuesday on the 300 block of North 57th Street, just steps from the Shepard Recreation Center, where dozens of people were outside playing basketball, football, or otherwise enjoying a summer evening.

The Inquirer doesn’t print mugshots, because Miss Hughes believes that being an anti-racist news organization just won’t allow that.

But the Inky isn’t the only news source in town, and the television stations did show the mugshots. Television news is, of course, is a medium much more dependent upon the visual, so it’s understandable that, regardless of how #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading the management are, pictures have to be published. The Inquirer, which has a far smaller circulation than the television stations have viewers, certainly didn’t keep the public from seeing the mugshots, and noting what Miss Hughes desperately wants not noted, that the suspects were all black — something most people would have inferred anyway, given the names of the suspects — but at a certain point, one has to ask: is the Inky, by censoring all mugshots, contributing not only to the stereotype that most criminals are black, but actually pushing a message, that all criminals are black?

I’m sure that’s not the intention of the journolists[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading who work for what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[3]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt., but it has to be considered a possibility. The stereotype that most criminals are black certainly exists, and by censoring the news where race is concerned, isn’t the Inky contributing to that stereotype? When the newspaper declines to publish something like this, won’t most of the readers simply assume what the Inky refuses to tell them? I’m guessing that there are at least some criminals in the City of Brotherly Love who are white, but the newspaper doesn’t tell us that.

The original article title in the Inquirer was “Tahmir Pinckney, Azyear Sutton-Walker, Marlon Spurell charged over West Philly shooting near Shepard rec center,” which you can see if you hold your cursor over the tab of the Inky article. An editor changed that, which wasn’t a terrible idea, since part of the article focused on the victims, but at least it wasn’t front-and-center on the newspaper’s website main page. Their names, however, were prominently featured in the subtitle.

The Enquirer Inquirer did tell us, in a sort of offhand way, that both the shooters and the victims were gang-bangers, without using the word “gang”:

an ongoing feud between groups of young men — with the shooters in the car on one side of the dispute, and the victims on the other. One of the victims shot Thursday had also been shot several weeks ago,

At least some of the targeted victims were armed themselves, and returned fire.

Mr Spurell was awaiting trial — or, more probably, having the charges dropped by Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner — on a drug trafficking charge from four months ago, while Mr “Pinkney pleaded no contest to a drug charge in 2019 and was sentenced to a year of probation.” I’m actually surprised that the newspaper told us that, because it will lead more readers to assume that the arrested men are actually guilty; these are some bad dudes!

The Inquirer includes short, first person, biographies of its writers at the bottom of its articles. I have to wonder: how does Mr Palmer focus on how criminal justice and law enforcement are “evolving and impacting communities during a moment of reform”? How does Mr Dean “report on law breakers, those they impact, and how the criminal justice system interacts with both” when he is required to censor part of the news? Both reporters are actually contributing to the stereotypes that Miss Hughes wants to avoid, though I’ve no doubt that such is required by editorial guidelines, regardless of what their personal inclinations might be.

Wouldn’t actually telling the whole truth serve better?

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑3 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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Killadelphia Black lives don't matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer

We noted, just yesterday, that Philadelphia, which as recently as June 30th, had been 14 homicides short of the same-day number in 2021, 257 versus 271, the year the City of Brotherly Love set its all-time homicide record of 562, but had caught up and passed the daily number by one murder.

Of course, being just one above 2021’s numbers means that just a couple of bloodless days could allow the killing rate to, once again, drop below 2021. At least for now, that isn’t what happened.

July ended with this year’s numbers closing in on 2021’s, but not quite there, with 317 vs 319 homicides, just a 0.627% decline, not statistically significant, but at least significant in that two fewer Philadelphians had spilled their life’s blood out in the city’s mean streets.

We pointed out yesterday that the nation’s third oldest continuously published newspaper, which I will admit to having mockingly called The Philadelphia Enquirer,[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. had made no mention at all, at least not that I could find on the website’s main page or crime page, that the ‘trend lines’ had crossed, but that has changed now . . . sort of.

3 men killed, 2 others wounded in separate Philly shootings

The fatal shootings occurred in East Frankford, Germantown, and Kensington, police said.

by Robert Moran | Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Three men were killed and two others were wounded in separate shootings Wednesday night across Philadelphia, police said.

Shortly before 9:45 p.m. in East Frankford, an unidentified man was shot in the head while driving a Nissan sedan in the area of Josephine and Gillingham Streets, said Inspector D.F. Pace.

The Nissan crashed into a utility pole at a high rate of speed, Pace said. The victim, who appeared to be in his 20s, was pronounced dead at the scene by medics.

The victim was still wearing his seat belt and the tires of the crashed Nissan were still spinning and eventually disintegrated, Pace said.

A witness told police a man stumbled out of the sedan after the crash and fled in an unknown direction, Pace said.

A spent shell casing was found inside the vehicle and a gun was found under the car, Pace said.

Just before 6:50 p.m. in Germantown, a 28-year-old man was on the 200 block of Zeralda Street when he was shot in the head and torso, said Chief Inspector Scott Small.

The man, who had previously lived on the block, was taken by police to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 8:04 p.m., Small said.

The reporter, Robert Moran, really needs to work on his writing; too many short, one or two sentence paragraphs! They need to be combined a bit, to look more polished. As usual, Mr Moran, following what I have inferred to be the Inquirer’s guidelines, deleted all references to race when it came to the victims, but, according to the city’s shooting victims database, all three were black males.

There’s more at the original, descriptions of the other killings, which you can read if you follow the link embedded in the cited article’s title. But Mr Moran’s concluding paragraph was all that I could find about the city’s homicide numbers surpassing 2021’s:

As of late Tuesday night, the city officially reported 322 homicides so far this year — one more than the same period in 2021, which ended with Philadelphia suffering an all-time record 562 homicides.

In other words, piffle! Nothing serious there at all.

The shootings victims database tells us that there have been twenty reported shootings in the city in just the first three days of August, with seven fatalities: five black males, one black female, and one Hispanic white male. Of the total of twenty shooting victims, one was a black female, three Hispanic white males, and sixteen black males. The Enquirer Inquirer, that proudly anti-racist news organization for which #BlackLivesMatter doesn’t believe that that is news which should be reported.

There are times in which I worry that I have reported on this subject too much, and this is the 46th article on this website entitled Killadelphia; “broken recordism” really isn’t a good look. But when we have the city’s newspaper of record trying to hide the records, when the city’s mayor, James Kenney, a Democrat in an unbroken string of Democrats 70 years long and who is tried, worn out, and clueless, when the district attorney is a defense attorney rather than a prosecutor and won’t lock up the bad guys, and the police commissioner a left coast stooge who can’t attract recruits and has left the department seriously undermanned, I can’t help but to harp on this subject, because it is far-left #woke policy put into governing force, on what should be a national stage, and the results should be shouted to everyone: this is the result of liberal policies.

One thing Philly has accomplished is to make painfully clear that, despite their protestations, black lives don’t matter, or at least they don’t matter if telling the truth about how they are being wasted in the city’s streets daily might threaten leftist policies. The idea that conservative policies might make a positive difference is so appalling, is just plain anathema, to the left that they’d rather see blood, red blood mostly from black bodies, running in the city’s streets than to try something different.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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Killadelphia! Philly is now ahead of last year's record pace, but the Inquirer hasn't noticed.

This is no surprise; we all knew it was coming. With three homicides in the City of Brotherly Love yesterday, Philadelphia has now moved slightly ahead of the pace of murders in 2021, the year which set the city’s annual record of 562.

This is something that you would think that The Philadelphia Inquirer, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, would have noticed, but at least as of 12:57 PM EDT, there is nothing on either the newspaper’s website main page or separate crime page. Nighttime reporter Robert Moran noticed two of the killings, but was apparently working solely from Philadelphia Police Department press releases:

2 dead in separate Philly shootings

A 29-year-old woman and a 30-year-old man were gunned down Tuesday night.

by Robert Moran | Tuesday, August 2, 2022

A 29-year-old woman and a 30-year-old man were fatally wounded in separate shootings Tuesday night in Philadelphia, police said.

Just before 8:15 p.m., the woman was outside on the 1800 block of Harrison Street in East Frankford when she was shot once in the left side of her back. Police rushed her to Temple University Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 8:33.

Around 7:30 p.m., the man was outside on the 5400 block of Pearl Street in West Philadelphia when he was shot several times in the chest, police said. He was taken by private vehicle to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 7:44.

Police reported no immediate arrests or other details in either case.

So far this year, there were 319 homicides in Philadelphia as of late Monday night. There were 321 for the same time last year, which the city ended with an all-time record 562 homicides.

So, Mr Moran did notice that the city was very possibly approaching tying or exceeding last year’s homicide totals. Possibly he didn’t have access to last year’s totals for August 2nd, and didn’t realize that two homicides would tie it. And possibly he didn’t have the information that not two, but three separate homicides had occurred, all by gunfire, but Fox 29’s Steve Keeley had. Mr Moran did have the police press releases on the two homicides he listed, but, following the Inquirer’s guidelines,[1]I do not have a copy of those guidelines, but have inferred that they exist due to the constant scrubbing of references to race in the Inquirer’s reporting, something which was not the case in … Continue reading he scrubbed the race of the police reports of both the slain woman and man.

Such is the journolism[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading of what I have occasionally called The Philadelphia Enquirer.[3]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. I have twice noted begging letters from the Lenfest Institute, which owns the Inky, asking for donations from subscribers above and beyond their subscriptions. Perhaps if the Inquirer’s reporting matched their history, I’d send something.

References

References
↑1 I do not have a copy of those guidelines, but have inferred that they exist due to the constant scrubbing of references to race in the Inquirer’s reporting, something which was not the case in previous years. And race is not the only thing that the Inky censors.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑3 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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Telling the people most at risk for contracting #Monkeypox how to avoid it is just way, way, way too politically incorrect!

It seems that some people have suggested that the name “Monkeypox” somehow discriminates against blacks and homosexual males, and should be changed, which immediately became the subject of jokes:

The apparently odd notion that, with Monkeypox, an infection that is being spread primarily, though not exclusively, by male homosexual sex, should make them question whether they really need to copulate with that cute guy at the end of the bar just never seems to occur. Continue reading →

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The journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer And people wonder why the Philadelphia Police Department cannot get recruits to fill the undermanned force?

No, I didn’t misspell the word in the title: the spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

I have noted, many times, that black lives don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer, as evidenced by the fact that the newspaper, to meet publisher Elizabeth Hughes’ decree that it be an “anti-racist news organization,” but has become racist in itself.

I also noted that when Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw decided to fire the officer who (allegedly) killed 12-year-old Thomas Siderio, Jr, who had shot first at police, injuring one, and then was pursued and shot as he fled by another officer, the Commissioner declined to name the officer, expressing concern for his safety, but the inquirer managed to ferret out his name and print it. What are we supposed to think other than the Inky is trying to get the officer killed?

Well, they’re at it again!

Philly police fire lieutenant who allegedly used the N-word on a radio call last month

Sgt. Eric Gripp, a department spokesperson, declined to identify the officer but said he was given 30 days notice of his termination on July 5 — a standard practice in police firings.

by Max Marin | Wednesday, July 20, 2022

The Philadelphia Police Department has moved to fire a veteran lieutenant who allegedly used the N-word while on a recorded line with a police radio-room worker last month, officials said Wednesday.

Lt Anthony McFadden, from his LinkedIn page.

Sgt. Eric Gripp, a department spokesperson, declined to identify the officer but said he was given 30 days’ notice of his termination — a standard practice in police firings — on July 5. Police sources identified the officer as Lt. Anthony McFadden, a 32-year veteran of the force who was previously assigned to the Special Victims Unit.

So, the Police Department spokesman declined to identify the officer, but the Inky turned to its internal sources, got his name, and published it anyway.

I have to ask: what’s the point? Only one thing comes to mind: The Inquirer is trying to keep Lt McFadden from being able to get another job on another police force.

This is the same newspaper which doesn’t report on most actual murders in the city, and scrubs out the race of the victims on the few occasions that it does, and of the (alleged) perpetrators when known. In all but the most sensational cases, the Inquirer does not tell readers the names of the perpetrators.

Miss Hughes’ newspaper won’t tell us about actual murders in the City of Brotherly Love, but a police lieutenant says a bad word? Grounds for the firing of a 32-year veteran — will they deny him his pension? — and for the Inky to try to sabotage any future job prospects he may have.

And people wonder why the Philadelphia Police Department cannot get recruits to fill the undermanned force? The Department doesn’t have their backs, and the local media try to crucify them!

oo0oo

Updated! Thursday, July 21, 2022 | 8:43 AM EDT

In the story Person of interest in Monday’s gunpoint rape on subway platform is in custody, reporter Mensah H Dean tells Inquirer readers that:

A person of interest in the rape of a woman on the platform of a South Philadelphia subway station was taken into custody Wednesday morning, the Philadelphia Police Department said.

The person, whose name has not been released, was taken to the Special Victims Unit for questioning, the department said in a statement Wednesday morning.

Perhaps the “person of interest’s” name has not been released, but I note that the Inky did not put enough effort into finding it out, as they did with Lt McFadden.

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73-year-old man murdered by teens in Philly The Inquirer wants to keep teen offenders out of the adult court system

Surprisingly enough, The Philadelphia Inquirer actually reported, albeit briefly, on two murders in the city yesterday.

Two people were killed and eight others wounded in separate shootings around Philadelphia on Monday, police said.

Just after 3 p.m., an unidentified man believed to be in his late 30s was outside on the 2700 block of North Broad Street when he was shot 13 times, police said.

The man was taken by medics to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police said a person was in custody but released no further information on the case.

Around 1:30 a.m., a 36-year-old man was fatally shot in the head outside on the 3800 block of North 9th Street in Hunting Park. The man, who was not identified, was pronounced dead at the scene by medics. Police reported no arrests.

Note that the Philadelphia Police press releases identified the races of the victims, but the Inky scrubbed that part.

This was a bigger crime story in Philly:

Brothers, ages 10 and 14, surrender to Philly police in traffic cone beating death of 73-year-old man

James Lambert Jr. was crossing Cecil B. Moore Avenue near 21st Street when a group of juveniles attacked him. Another North Philly woman said she was attacked a month earlier at the same intersection.

by Robert Moran and Oona Goodin-Smith | Monday, July 11, 2022

Two brothers — ages 10 and 14 — have surrendered to police for questioning by homicide detectives as “persons of interest” in a fatal attack on a 73-year-old man last month in North Philadelphia, police said.

No charges have been filed as police continue to investigate the June 24 assault of James Lambert Jr., who was crossing Cecil B. Moore Avenue near 21st Street just before 2:40 a.m. when a group of juveniles assailed him. In a surveillance video, one of the participants can be seen knocking him to the sidewalk with a traffic cone.

Police say seven juveniles were involved.

While Lambert remained on the sidewalk, a girl can be seen in the video picking up the traffic cone and throwing it at Lambert, who then appears to stagger down Cecil B. Moore, followed by the girl, who retrieves the traffic cone and throws it at him again. She is wearing a bright pink long-sleeved sweater, with matching pool slide sandals. White-framed sunglasses are propped on top of her head.

As many as seven youths had gathered by that point. Video shows them talking before leaving the area.

Lambert suffered head injuries and died the next day, police said.

The photo of Mr Lambert is from a tweet embedded in the Inquirer story.

You know what wasn’t mentioned in the Inky? The Philadelphia Police released a video of the attack on Mr Lambert, including the descriptions shown on the right. But when the Inky reported on the story — which, to be fair, did include a link to the video — “four Black male and three Black female teen offenders” became “four males and three females”.

I might not have written about this story, save for one OpEd that was also in the Inquirer, still on the website main page, while the story about the two brats surrendering has been pushed back to the crime page:

Pennsylvania needs to stop prosecuting children as adults

This legislation will reduce recidivism, control costs, make our communities safer, and allow all young people the opportunity to grow.

by Camera Bartolotta and Anthony H. Williams | Monday, July 11, 2022

Imagine only seeing the sun for one hour a day while crammed into a 6-by-8-foot cell. Now imagine that you are only 16 years old, yet to be found guilty, and you are spending your days in an adult jail when you should be in school or spending time with your family. This is the reality of many children charged as adults through “direct file.”

Really? Imagine that you are 73-year-old James Lambert, walking alone, with the help of a cane,[1]The released video obscures the cane, but if you look at the published photo of Mr Lambert, you’ll see the handle of a walking cane. at 2:38 in the morning, and you’ll never see the sun again.

And am I really supposed to believe that, following the high-profile murder of Mr Lambert by teenagers, the Inquirer’s editors didn’t deliberately decide to print this OpEd with keeping these cretins out of the adult system in mind?

Direct file, or “statutory exclusion,” is a provision where kids under 18 are automatically prosecuted as adults for certain offenses, without the chance of a review by a juvenile court judge. This practice often forces the youth to be held in adult jails before trial and, if found guilty, adult prisons. And it doesn’t affect all children equally — according to the Pennsylvania Juvenile Justice Task Force’s findings, 56% of kids convicted as adults are Black boys, even though they make up just 7% of Pennsylvania’s youth population. This disparity is even starker than the disproportionate treatment that Black youth face in other parts of the justice system.

Whenever I see numbers like those, I always finish the article, and you know what I never see? There is never, ever, even the slightest hint that perhaps, just perhaps, if “56% of kids convicted as adults are Black boys, even though they make up just 7% of Pennsylvania’s youth population,” somewhere around 56% of crimes committed by minors which wind up in adult courts are committed by black boys.

There is always the implied, but usually unspoken, argument that if there is a ‘racial disparity’ in arrests, prosecutions, convictions, or incarcerations, it simply must be the result of racism; there is never the consideration that such ‘racial disparities’ are a reflection of a ‘racial disparity’ in who actually commits crimes.

Me? I’m 69-years-old and retired, so I can’t be ‘cancelled’, which means I can actually write the very politically incorrect truth. If I were an Inquirer reporter, and I had the temerity to write something like that, I’d have the security guard, ready to escort me out the door, watching me as I emptied out my desk, while Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar stood nearby, tapping his foot, smugly happy for having fired me, while murmurs, and possible jeers, sounded across the newsroom. In journolism,[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading the truth shall set you free . . . from your job.

Stan Wischnowski was unavailable for comment.

Was the attack on Mr Lambert perhaps an isolated incident?

About a month before Lambert was killed, a 53-year-old woman from North Philadelphia said she, too, was ambushed at 21st and Cecil B. Moore.

Watching the video of the attack on 73-year-old Lambert on the news, the woman said she thought it “could have been me.”

The woman, who spoke to The Inquirer on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said she was walking on 21st Street toward the subway on her way to an overnight nursing shift in late May when she spotted a group of young teenage girls on the street.

One of the teens — whom the woman said she recognized from the video of the attack on Lambert — asked her for a dollar. When she did not give them money, the woman said the teens began to swear at her. One threw a brick at her chest, and slammed a metal dolly on her back, leaving deep bruises. Startled, the woman said she threw her cup of hot coffee at the group and ran, phoning her family. . . . .

She said she didn’t contact the police initially about the attack, but called on Friday after hearing about Lambert’s death.

We have previously noted the difference between crimes of evidence and crimes of reporting. If a man rapes a woman on the streets of Philadelphia, as far as the police are concerned, if it wasn’t reported, it didn’t happen. It is commonly assumed that most rapes go unreported, with some guesstimates being as high as 90% not reported. Crimes like robbery might go unreported if the victims do not trust the police or think it will do any good, or are fearful of revenge by the criminals. When your city is stuck with a District Attorney like Mr Krasner, who doesn’t believe in prosecuting criminals, or sentencing them harshly when they are prosecuted and convicted, what reason is there to report that you were robbed?

To the Philly police, the assault on the 53-year-old woman, by at least one of the murderers, murderers!, of Mr Lambert, never happened in late May, because she got away and didn’t report it, or didn’t report it until she saw the video of Mr Lambert’s murder.

Why? Well, she feared retaliation, she said. Whether her assault was caught on camera we do not know, but there was nothing the police could do about a crime that, to them, never happened.

And so we get back to state Senators Bartolotta’s and Williams'[3]Camera Bartolotta is a Republican state senator. She represents Beaver, Greene, and Washington Counties. Anthony H. Williams is a Democratic state senator. He represents parts of Philadelphia and … Continue reading OpEd. They don’t want minors charged with serious crimes to be tried in adult courts. But if the 14-year-old who turned himself in for Mr Lambert’s murder is tried as a juvenile, he will be out of whatever juvenile institution they put him in when he turns 18, and his record, for murder!, will be sealed. It will be as though it never happened.

But James Lambert will still be stone-cold graveyard dead.

States do not put juveniles into the adult system for littering or out-of-control horseplay, or racing unregistered dirt bikes down city streets; they go into the adult system for really serious crimes. The senators tell us that they only want to change the system, and that juvenile offenders can still be sent into the adult system if their crimes are really heinous, but they want a juvenile court judge to take that decision. Thanks, but no thanks: we need to treat crime harshly, not so much for deterrence — which doesn’t seem to work anyway — but to get these miscreants off the streets!

References

References
↑1 The released video obscures the cane, but if you look at the published photo of Mr Lambert, you’ll see the handle of a walking cane.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑3 Camera Bartolotta is a Republican state senator. She represents Beaver, Greene, and Washington Counties. Anthony H. Williams is a Democratic state senator. He represents parts of Philadelphia and Delaware County.