Jim Westrich wrote:
> James Byrd, the late victim of the Texas attack, was disabled as well
> (learning disabled I believe).
Thanks for this info, I don't think the the LA Times mentioned that he was disabled.
> The mainstream national news reports on the James Byrd case focus more on
> the murderers than on James Byrd or even his family as well. While these
> reports are tinged with reprobation they also seem to be morbidly
> fascinated with the killers.
>
The LA times chose to make the alleged killer of James Byrd the focus of its coverage. It had a picture of the suspect showing his tatoos - some skinhead symbol for white racial superiority. I could not tell you what the victim, James Byrd looked like (though I could have missed some of the coverage).
On the other hand, Matthew Shepard's face was repeatedly printed in the news. It seems that his image was imprinted on every household in the U.S. Barney Frank did a good job making sure it was not forgotten.
I believe earlier there was some discussion earlier on this list about the class issue and Matthew Shepard. A parallel could be drawn to the Ramsey case, the middle class little white girl who was murdered and gets her picture in publications all over the country while hundreds of poor children have atrocities committed against them and we would never know about them if we counted on Newsweek, the National Enquirer, etc. to inform us.
To really flesh this out, it would take looking at much more coverage in newspapers across the country.
Marta