Liberal talk show hosts are going nuts today because members of the mainstream media reported that law enforcement sources said a “dark-skinned” person was a subject of interest in the terrorist attack at this week's Boston Marathon.
For example, MSNBC's Al Sharpton and Chris Hayes angrily whined that the information only served to fuel racism.
As a journalist who has covered criminal matters for decades, I want to inform Reverend Sharpton and Hayes that I too would have shared the information about the bombing suspect.
I view my job as a journalist as sharing what I know about whatever case I'm covering–not wringing my hands about what racist nuts mights conclude from the information.
]
My readers expect me to tell them the truth, especially in a large county–bigger than about 19 states–especially where the mainstream daily, The Orange County Register, often makes political calculations before reporting the news.
My bond is with my readers–not police, not defense lawyers, not judges and certainly not hyper-sensitive, ideologically-driven talking heads on TV.
So, if a law enforcement agents tell me a wanted suspect's identifying features–black, white, Asian, whatever–I'm going to relay that to my readers.
And, spare me the whiny, absurd sofa psychological analysis of racism for the inclusion of such information.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
