Gothamist: 2003 Orchard Street Murder Revisited

jake

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 12:03:26 -0500

i think larry's data supports our contention- we are not biased.

larry dvm

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 11:32:25 -0500

Two notes on methods: I did my best to exclude duplicate comments, but did not exclude comments from Jen and Jake. Two non-white-victim stories included multiple victims, but no white-victim stories included multiple victims. Therefore, the number of unique non-white-victims covered would be higher than 13. No accidental deaths were included. Also, the Columbia foot-licking story was excluded. Two stories in which the race of the victim could not be discerned were excluded. White-immigrant victims were counted as white. To my recollection there were two of these. NB: The most commented white-victim story drew 58 comments. 3 other white-victim stories drew more than 20 comments. Only 1 non-white-victim story drew more than 10 comments.

larry dvm

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 11:27:33 -0500

I doubt anyone's interested in this post anymore, but I did a little back-of-the-envelope analysis of Gothamist's coverage of murders, rapes, and assaults since Jan 1 of this year. I wanted to get to the bottom of the charges that Gothamist is biased. The most important finding is--it seems like a lot of death and destruction! There have been 40 such stories posted in the past 29 weeks. Of these, 19 were stories about white victims, 16 were stories about non-white victimes, and 5 were stories with both white and non-white victims. This is likely to correlate to the mainstream media's attention to the same crimes, as well as Gothamist's attention to Manhattan news (more than other boroughs), especially news from Columbia and NYU. But more importantly, the number of white-victim stories was inflated by the Sarah Fox and Monica Meadows cases, who got 5 posts each. Excluding these repeats and a couple of "updates," there were actually only 9 unique white-victim stories, and 13 unique non-white-victim stories. Bias, for sure, but of a different kind. I had a hypothesis that the appearance of bias in the postings was aggravated by the extensive comments on the white-victim stories (i.e., if you repeat something enough, it becomes true). In fact, there were an average of 12.8 comments on white-victim stories, an average of 5.0 comments on non-white-victim stories, and an average of 5.2 comments on diverse-victims stories. Without undertaking a textual analysis, it's hard to explain what this variation means. Though, from casual observation, I would say that comment-posters obsession with the perceived racial bias in Gothamist's editorial decisions actually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Jenn

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 09:19:18 -0500

This might sound harsh, but hear me out for a minute. Isn't there something natural about paying more attention to a crime/situation that you relate to? For me, it's more compelling when someone of my age/economic position/geographical location is involved in a bad situation because it is easier for me to picture it happening to me. It doesn't mean that I think drug dealers, the homeless or people who are killed while engaging in illegal activities deserve to die, or that their deaths are any less tragic than anyone else's, but rather that they are more difficult for me to relate to personally. Since I don't know Jen and Jake personally, I can't comment on what they do or don't relate to, but I hardly feel like Gothamist is only trying to spotlight crimes against "white bread manhattanites" due to a specific bias.

jake

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 23:03:40 -0500

i'm on a no-responding-to-idiots diet (suggested by my physician, eliot shepard), but i have to second jen- i read gothamist pretty closely and i don't detect any more bias in jen's crime postings than i do in the post or the daily news. jen is one of the warmest, most empathetic people i know. that said, the sad fact is that we have to work with what is out there on the web, and often it's the most telegenic victims that get the most press coverage. but we are sensitive to that, and try to balance things out. finally, i just can't believe the things some of you trolls post about jen- shit that you'd never in a million years say to someone's face. the callousness of it, and pure stupidity astounds me. for that reason, next month gothamist is going to begin require true comment registration. it won't make it impossible for you to create a fake account to hide behind, but it will make it a lot easier for me to delete your comments, and dramatically increase the amount of time it takes you to post this crap. i just wish we could launch it today.

Jen

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 21:27:05 -0500

I think Jake and I were interested in the Burke O'Brien story because it happened so close to where Jake used to live, and that it was a young kid just like us. And what I wonder about is the hundreds of cases that go unsolved. I have a lot of empathy and sadness for a lot of what happens in the city, but I don't post about every single incident because (a) I don't have that much time and (b) it would bring people down. As for only concentrating on crimes affecting whites, you can think what you like, but I do post about a lot of crimes - the terrible murder of 13 year-old Tyisha McCoy in Harlem, who was strangled in Harlem by a possible acquaintance; a South Asian transit worker getting stabbed; the Timothy Stansbury shooting in Brooklyn...

ed

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 18:27:56 -0500

"the men who don't belong" in the East Village and Lower East Side?!?!!? You're funny!!!!

GP

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 18:01:19 -0500

Whoa, Jen. "The Last Real New Yorker's" point (while harshly put and a bit self important - i think my nanna was the �Last Real New Yorker� thank you very much) is legit. Gothamist definitely seems to get "fascinated" only by the white-bred, manhattanite crime stories in the City. To your credit you've done stories about the less well to do in the outer boroughs - like "Murdered Homeless Man Mourned" - but its fair to say that Gothamist wasn't obsessed with that story to the same extent as the Model-Shot-on-Subway story. One would hate to think that Gothamist is prone to the same sensationalist impulses as the mainstream media. Isn�t Gothamist supposed to give us NYC as it is, instead of the sanitized glamorized CBS, NBC, ABC verison? The point is not that anyone wants NYC to return to the bullet riddled and trash strewn days of the 70s but rather some of us just wonder if you remember those gothamists who aren't models or bankers or even manhattanites.

Mike

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 17:44:10 -0500

What happended to Mr. Burke could happen to any one of us. I have noticed many times in the LES and EV the men who don't belong, shuffling through the streets angrily eyeing passing passers-by. And remember the man who attacked the patrons of Bar Veloce. There are hundreds more just like him around. So laugh all you want about the dead "banker" - next time it may be you.

what's yer point?

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 12:46:36 -0500

Hey Last Real New Yorker, what's your problem? Instead of whining about this site, why not go do something really New York, something that the rest of us just wouldn't understand? Go frolic in a really authentic, white person-free, crime-ridden and, oh yeah, really New York neighborhood. Go rant and rave to someone about how much better New York was when you couldn't even take the subways. What a fkkng loser.

mark

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 09:51:12 -0500

It's not quite that simple unfortunately....

Tyrese

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 09:45:21 -0500

Someone tried to rob him and his friend as they were coming home and they probably resisted and therefore he was killed.