Probably not, but I'll give you three guess why they weren't. MLK dreamed of a land where people were judged by the content of their character. It's serves no purpose in the harmony of whites and blacks if one side is treated differently, whether white or black. The media probably thinks "it's helping" by not reporting on a crime. However, a savage double homicide is a savage double homicide that deserves to be reported on regardless of the victims or purpetrators color of skin. It's insulting to the victims to ignore what happened.
The Politics of News: Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, were out on a dinner date in Knoxville, Tenn., on January 6, when they were carjacked, kidnapped, raped, tortured, sexually mutilated, and killed.
Despite the press's taste for dramatic crimes, even crimes that do not involve missing blondes in Aruba, the story got almost no publicity. Conservative bloggers, who are beginning to buzz about the case, think they know why: the couple was white and the five suspects arrested in the case are black.
The mainstream press does not like to carry stories of black mayhem and white victims. First, there is the fear of stirring up more racism among Klansmen and neo-Nazis, as the Knoxville case has started to do. More importantly, the newsroom culture tends to view black-on-white crimes as responses to black oppression, and therefore not worth reporting. Whereas similar white-on-black crime is oppression itself, and thus crucially important to put before readers and viewers.
This classic newsroom double standard pops up again and again. A recent example is the "second rape case in Durham." In this eerie reversal of the Duke lacrosse story, a girl was allegedly raped in the bathroom of a Duke fraternity house during a party. North Carolina's News & Observer said the suspect being sought was in "his late teens or early 20s, about 6 foot 1 and wearing a do-rag, a gray sweatshirt and blue jeans." However, the story failed to mention that the suspect was black, the alleged victim is white, and the fraternity, initially unnamed, is African-American.
When the suspect is not immediately apprehended, the public is usually told by police and the press to look out for someone fitting a particular description. But it does little good if reporters tell us that the man being sought has a small mole on the side of his neck and parts his hair in the middle if we don't know what color he is. Newsroom squeamishness about even mentioning blacks, gays, and women as perpetrators is quite high.
Later the News & Observer mentioned the racial angle, as it had to. But the national press wasn't interested. Once it became clear that the suspect was black, the story lost any chance of journalistic traction. Even the strangeness of a rape report so closely following the other Duke lacrosse story attracted no attention.
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