Category Archives: Long Beach attack

Long Beach attack

Weird coverage?

I’ve been reading some of the latest stories on the Long Beach attacks and I have mixed feelings.

First, with the LAT coverage, the wording used by reporter Joe Mozingo seems to be inflammatory. I guess its been a while since I’ve had to be in a courtroom, but has he unabashedly taken a point of view favoring the defense? Check out this graf from Wednesday’s story:

Bouas zeroed in on this because her star witness, Kiana Alford, said she saw one of the assailants asking himself, “What did I do?” before he jumped in a red car and fled the scene. Bouas has been trying to defend Alford since she wavered on cross-examination, and since Alford’s companion that night testified that they came upon the victims only after the attack.

Toward the end of the session, Bouas tried to call Ross’ judgment into question.

“So you just left your girlfriend of eight months with the guys that were being rowdy, and just got in the car?” she asked, incredulously.

Is it just me, or is this graf kind of inflammatory? This is the type of wording I usually see in a novel, rather than a newspaper story. I mean, come on – she “zeroed in?” Then was “incredulously” asking questions? And how does he know she was “trying” to defend Alford ever since? Did she say so? I don’t know — I was always told never to use this type of language in a story unless the source said it.

Then there was today’s story. I’m not exactly sure what was the intent, but all the descriptions the reporter gave me in the story led me straight to defendant Anthony Ross’s Myspace page. I might as well give you the address, but I’m not trying to make it that easy for everyone else. I’m not sure if that was necessarily the intent, but anyone following the story could easily put two and two together the way I did.

But I’m not singling out the LAT or Joe Mozingo. I do have beef with the Press Telegram’s coverage. First, I appreciate the detail and thoroughness in Tracy Manzer’s stories. But they’re getting super long and super complicated because of not naming those who can be named – like the defendants who are now 18 and some of the witnesses who haven’t asked for anonymity, like the Good Samaritan. I mean, shoot, can we at least get first names? It would make reading these stories a lot easier.

For the record

I check my stats all the time. For the past — let’s see, crap! nine years, I’ve been fascinated with how people get to my site, why people get to my site and what they’re looking for. I think that’s one of the reasons why I’ve kept the site for so long — I would rather know what they’re looking for than not know what they’re looking for.

Anyway, in regards to today’s LA Weekly story about the Long Beach hate crimes:

– first, I had no clue she was going to include my “complaining” about the attacks in her story.

– second, I don’t go by Darleene Barrientos anymore, much less Darleene Barrientos Powells. Good God, look how long that name would be. It already takes me forever to sign my name can you imagine if I had tried to keep my maiden name? I wonder if she cited me that way so that, as a source, I would have “ethnic street cred.”

– the opinions voiced in previous posts were merely my observations and in no way related to my work as an online news producer. Everyone who works with me knows I go for the cleanest possible editing and the best, most punchy headlines I can muster. That said, I love my job. Just so everyone knows. ^_^

I gotta admit, though — getting a mention in a newspaper is kind of cool (when its not my own byline), even when its something as silly as this.

Deafening silence on the Long Beach attack*

Considering that so many people mostly get their news from TV, it is wholly disturbing that it appears L.A.’s local TV news is ignoring an actual hate crime, but doing extensive coverage on race-related lawsuits and celebrity rants. Honestly, I don’t get it. Is it that we think we gotta cut these kids some slack because, hey, blacks have had it tough? Or is it because we don’t think there’s such a thing as a black-on-white hate crime? What’s going on in our TV newsrooms?

Check out the Google, Yahoo and Technorati offerings. Some off the record chats with those who know about these things have suggested that maybe TV News has declined to cover the adjucation (minor’s version of a trial) because no one ever got that “exclusive interview” with the beating victims. A print reporter told me the family has also been choosy with the interviews they’ve done.

But so what? This Huffington Post entry by Earl Ofari Hutchinson seems to articulate the quandary best:

The attacks by the black high school students also put civil rights leaders on the spot. The knock against them is that they rush to the barricades to condemn attacks against blacks, but are virtually mute when blacks are accused of racial attacks.

The filing of hate crime charges against 8 young blacks in Long Beach, California for allegedly beating three white women on Halloween night has put them back on the spot again. And it has also renewed the debate over whether black attacks against whites are really hate crimes, and what should be said and done about them.

Whites still commit the overwhelming majority of hate attacks and blacks are still their prime targets. But blacks do commit hate crimes, and as it turns out are committing lots more of them than generally known. According to the 2004 FBI Hate Crimes report, blacks committed slightly more than 20 percent of the hate crimes in America. In most cases, the majority of their victims are whites. An earlier report from the Southern Poverty Law Center warned that there has been a sharp jump in black-on-white violence during the 1990s. And there’s where the confusion comes in. Did the blacks assault whites solely for their money and valuables, or out of anger for a real or imagined racial insult? That blurred the line between common street crime and hate crimes, and made it easier to ignore or downplay the race aspect of the attacks, and thus not classify them as a hate crime. Authorities also mindful of potential backlash from black leaders, and dreading inflaming racial tensions, are deeply reluctant to brand black-on-white attacks as hate crimes.

In the Virginia and now Long Beach race attacks, city officials and local black leaders were cautious and guarded in what they said about the cases. They bent way over to look for reasons beyond race to explain the assaults. They cited frustration, boredom, and anger, as possible extenuating motives. That wasn’t a bad thing. Black violence against whites can’t match the scale and history of white beatings, killings, and verbal physical intimidation, and harassment of blacks. But that still doesn’t cancel out, let alone justify kid glove treatment and silence when blacks are the perpetrators and whites are the victims.

So here’s my next question: Is there an absence of TV and network news coverage because the usual suspects (NAACP, Rev. Jesse Jackson) won’t touch this case with a 10-foot pole? That’s a sorry reason to not cover a story that has Long Beach (the second largest city in L.A. County) up in arms.

Here’s my previous post on the subject (scroll all the way down) and today’s LAT and PT coverage on the court proceedings. And please don’t get any of this twisted – I don’t know if any of those kids are guilty or not. I’m waiting to see the outcome of this court proceeding like everyone else, and honestly, I’m a little afraid of what the outcome will be. And everyone knows that I care not if a person is white, black, yellow or even purple and gold (although I do root for the Lakers steadfastly) — right is right no matter what. My beef is that TV and cable TV news seems to refuse to touch this issue. If I’m wrong (since I don’t watch every local news channel, obviously), please — let me know.

*I just read in the Long Beach Report that KTLA 5 and KTTV 11 were the only LA news stations to report on the community meeting to discuss the attacks. Shameful.