Initial AP Coverage of Chicago Facebook Torture Avoids Virtually All Meaningful Details

January 5th, 2017 11:19 AM

The Associated Press's initial Wednesday evening report on the horrific beating and torture of a mentally handicapped 18 year-old in Chicago is woefully and predictably weak.

A comparison of what Fox 32 in Chicago was reporting at the time of AP's story will demonstrate how much the wire service chose to ignore.

The AP's original unbylined report has been replaced in most locales by newer updates. But the wire service's initial report is still present at the Boston Globe.

Despite the January 5 time stamp, based on the earliest reader comment, the story below initially appeared at the Globe at about 10 p.m. on Wednesday, January 4:

APinitialChicagoBeatingReport010417

Thanks to the dearth of detail, the AP's reference to the attack as possibly being "racially motivated" leaves readers completely unable to determine the race of either the victim or the perpetrators.

Here's a significant portion of the Fox 32 report (HT Powerline):

ChicagoBWtorture010417FoxCgo

All items underlined or boxed relate to details which were known or should have been known to AP at the time its report was posted, were not reported by AP, and which its readers deserved to know. Addressing the excuse that the AP report above was only a first take — How does that justify including none of the details underlined or boxed?

The green-boxed item is something many Chicagoans will understand, but that AP readers outside of Chicago will not — and should. To get from Streamwood, where the victim was kidnapped, to the Chicago West Side block where the victim was held is a 40-minute drive (kidnapping is among the charges that were being considered at the time of Fox 32's report). This would seem to indicate that a great deal of planning was involved in this sick enterprise.

The blue-boxed items, and the re-underlined "F*** Trump" and "F*** white people" text, tell us how absolutely determined the politically correct establishment is to avoid reality.

It's one thing for Chicago police to say "We're still looking into it," and otherwise choose not to talk about it. It's quite another to have them publicly evaluate these actions while they are supposedly still looking into them and claim that they're not what they appear to be. How can it be so obvious that there's no political or racial animus, when the white victim tortured was forced to curse Donald Trump at knifepoint (reporting found elsewhere indicates that the victim was also ordered to say "F*** white people)?

But the primary criticism here is reserved for the Associated Press, which from all appearances deliberately chose to lengthen the amount of time it kept much of the American public away from meaningful details about this horrific crime.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.