In The Virginian Pilot’s defense.

Dennis Findley, editor of the Virginian Pilot, has a problem on his hands.  Two of his employees were beaten by a gang of “youths” as they were stopped at a light in Norfolk, VA.  They were beaten badly enough to be off work for a week, suffering cuts and bruises, and the female employee now says she’s afraid to be home alone.  There is a complicating factor, the victims are white, the mob that attacked them was black.

The problem was created by the paper declining to report the incident for two weeks.  In fact, the paper has never actually published a news report to this day.  The story got out via an editorial column.

So that’s Findley’s problem. He’s being attacked for political correctness, burying a story of black on white crime.  His defense:

“Here is what happened. Forster and Rostami were victims of what police described as a simple assault, and, initially, they did not want to be named in a news story. If these were the circumstances with anyone in the community, we would not have done a story.”

In my opinion, the defense is nonsense. 

First, when does a responsible newspaper use a police crime description when its own employees have an intimate knowledge of what happened BECAUSE IT HAPPENED TO THEM?  Here Findley is simply hiding behind the police report  pretending that he doesn’t know any more  about the crime that that.  According to his reasoning, a crime is what the police say it is.  If that's the case, the Zimmerman criminal investigation should not have appeared in any newspaper because the police did not initially charge Zimmerman with a crime.  Unbelievable.

Second, he states that his employees didn’t want to be named.  I’m not sure that ever stopped the paper in the past, but the paper has a duty to report mob attacks and could have done so without naming names.  This underlying issue here is not the personal identity of the paper’s employees who were attacked, but the fact of the attack.  And the casual, business as usual, reaction of the police to the attack ("It’s what they do”).  And, as shown in a later video once the story got out, of the warning of local “youths” to people who don’t look like them who venture on to their turf. 

Findley: 

“We did not cover up anything. What would we gain by protecting some thugs who beat up two of our reporters? The accusation is ludicrous.”

 Well, there are a number of reasons why the dominant local paper may not want to report on a violent attack in downtown Norfolk.  It gives the city a black eye, for one thing.  It shows racial tensions that the paper would rather not reveal, for reasons that I won't go into here.  There are a number of reasons that others have given that answer Findley’s rhetorical question and none are ludicrous.   

Findley: 

“Based on the facts, this story did not cross the bar to be published because as a general rule, The Pilot doesn't publish stories about simple assaults.”

Is Findley hiding behind the police report again?  Is a gang attack on passing motorists simple assault?  The Virginian Pilot says it did nothing wrong and stands by it's handling of the attack on its staff members.

As FOX News says: we report, you decide.