You Don't Hate The Media Enough

The Intentional Outrage The Media Creates When They Are Forced To Cover A Story That Goes Against The Narrative

OPINION: By Walter Curt

There’s a special tone legacy outlets use when they’re dragged, heels dug in, to a story they’d rather bury. It’s the voice of a hall monitor sighing at the unruly kids: Fine, we’ll “cover” it—but only by scolding you for noticing. Over the weekend, that voice was everywhere. A 23‑year‑old Ukrainian refugee was stabbed to death on a Charlotte light‑rail car, a murder so unprovoked and horrifying that the security footage jolted even a numb public. And how did the professional press—the people who preen about “speaking truth to power”—frame it once they finally acknowledged it? Not as a public‑safety failure, a policy failure, or a moral failure, but as a story about MAGA influencers “drawing repeated attention” to crime. Translation: The problem isn’t the killing; the problem is that you peasants won’t stop talking about it.

That same write‑up dutifully tells readers that the real accelerant isn’t urban disorder or revolving‑door justice but the “rising number of surveillance cameras” that capture the blood and make it impossible to deny. Ah yes—the camera did it. If only there weren’t so many lenses recording reality, we might still be safe inside the spreadsheet fantasy where everything is trending the right direction. The piece even elevates a quote—“crime is not a data thing—it’s a feeling thing”—to wag a finger at people who, silly them, feel unsafe after watching a young woman’s throat opened on mass transit. In this telling, the real offense is not the crime but the public’s reaction to seeing it with their own eyes.

Meanwhile, when some outlets finally addressed the actual case, they could not resist the old “Republicans pounce” framing: Republicans “seized,” “targeted,” or “weaponized” the tragedy. That is the press’s favorite euphemism for Don’t look at the story; look at the people pointing at the story. It’s not journalism; it’s fire control—redirect the reader’s gaze from cause to chorus, from facts to reaction, so no one has to ask why known violent offenders are loose on trains. This isn’t a one‑off tic; it’s a habit decades in the making, practically a newsroom ritual at this point.

Here are some facts the hall monitors minimized. The suspect, according to public records, had a long trail of cases—fourteen in Mecklenburg County alone, including time served for robbery with a dangerous weapon. Yet he was on that rail car, off paper, free to do what he did. You don’t need a Ph.D. in criminology to see the policy failure. You need a pulse.

And lest you think Charlotte was a grim anomaly, look at Alabama. A 59‑year‑old retired Auburn University professor was stabbed to death while walking her dog in a park. Charges filed, suspect in custody—and a fraction of the national attention. There’s no culture‑war carnival to be staged from her death, so it passes with a shrug. The public sees the pattern even if the press tries to un‑see it.

Notice the game: When a story threatens the narrative, the press doesn’t report it—they report on the people noticing it. If you share the video, you’re “amplifying.” If you ask how a man with a dozen‑plus cases was on a train with a pocketknife, you’re “politicizing.” If you want policies that keep violent, untreated offenders off the street, you’re “pouncing.” The press used to be the Fourth Estate; now it’s the emotional support animal for its own storylines. That’s why the camera becomes the villain; that’s why “feelings” are pathologized when they’re yours and gospel when they’re theirs.

And yes, the double standard is fluorescent. When Daniel Penny restrained a threatening man on a New York subway, the coverage was wall‑to‑wall, the moralizing relentless, the verdict prewritten. But when a woman is murdered on video in a blue‑city transit car, the national conversation comes wrapped in caveats, context, and counterspeech about “overall crime declines.” You’re allowed to see the broader politics only when they cut one way.

Here’s the part that really rankles: We’re told to trust “the data.” But the public’s “feelings” aren’t hallucinations; they are judgments formed by lived reality—by closing your shop early because the street chaos is getting worse, by moving your kid from the bus to a carpool, by memorizing which corners to avoid. The spreadsheet says progress; the platform video says duck. Faced with that contradiction, a healthy press would interrogate the policy loop: decarceration policies with no supervision, prosecutors slow‑walking detention, mental‑health systems that cannot or will not commit the clearly dangerous. Instead, our press interrogates you for noticing.

The result is intentional outrage. Not your outrage—theirs. “How dare you force us to cover this?” is the subtext, every time. They’ll dash off a newsletter line about MAGA amplification, toss in a vibe‑policing quote, gesture at macro trends, and call it a day. Meanwhile, families plan funerals and commuters scan rail cars like TSA agents. The old press, once proud of shoe‑leather reporting on the unglamorous realities of city life, now treats those realities like a reputational hazard to be managed. It’s not just bias; it’s contempt.

If the legacy press covered street crime with the same fervor it covers palace intrigue, we’d have a more serious country. City hall couldn’t hide behind rituals and euphemisms. DAs would have to defend their bail practices with specifics. Transit authorities would have to explain why cameras catch murders instead of deterring them—why the only time a rule‑breaker meets a consequence is when the coroner arrives. But the media class prefers the meta‑story because the real story condemns the policies and priorities they’ve sold for years. Better to scold the audience than re‑examine the creed.

And so the market is doing what markets do: reassigning trust. Viewers migrate to outlets that cover the life they actually live. Independent reporters and small shops push the uncomfortable stories first. Legacy brands protest that this is irresponsible, populist, even cruel. Spare me. The cruelty is ignoring a murdered refugee on a train and tut‑tutting at the people who refuse to pretend it didn’t happen. The cruelty is treating a dead professor as a one‑day local blotter item because there’s no political utility in lingering on her name. The cruelty is telling a worried public that safety is a feeling problem while the videos play on loop.

Do you hate the media enough? Not the idea of a free press—that’s essential to a free people—but the cartel of narrative enforcers who traded reporting for reputational management. Hate them enough to stop funding the contempt. Hate them enough to reward those who still cover what matters—crime in your city, order on your subway, justice in your courts—without filtering it through the etiquette of the cocktail circuit. Hate them enough to demand that the camera remains pointed at reality, not at you for noticing it. When they finally feel the humility of lost audience share and shuttered bureaus, maybe—just maybe—they’ll remember what their job used to be. Until then, they’ll keep writing Republicans pounce and wondering why no one salutes.