A Vile New York Times Propaganda Op, Annotated

The New York Times is getting mocked, and rightly so, for a Monday evening headline contorting the brutal slaying of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on public transportation in Charlotte, N.C. into a story about “a Firestorm on the Right.”

I know most people only read the headlines, and most normal people don’t read The New York Times at all. But the entire article is every bit as craven as the headline, which deservedly made the rounds for its ghoulishness:

We only get four sentences describing the attack before the article’s three authors launch into the main focus of their story: Republicans and their pouncing. Mind you, this isn’t a case of some reporter trying to come up with a fresh angle after publishing dozens of newsier articles on the subject; this is the Times’ very first article about Zarutska’s death, according to its own internal search results.

 Eduardo Medina, Emily Cochrane, and Richard Fausset (who covers “conservative culture” for the Times) explain how the murder has become:

“…an accelerant for conservative arguments about crime, race and the perceived failings of big-city justice systems and mainstream news outlets in the Trump era.”

Yes, this is a story about the “Trump era.” If you read the whole thing, you’ll discover that Donald Trump’s name is mentioned seven times. That’s almost as many times as the attacker, whose name is mentioned nine times. The victim’s name is mentioned only five times, excluding photo captions.

Medina, Cochrane, and Fausset go on to say the “outrage” is:

“…part of a pattern in which President Trump and his allies highlight horrific crimes to bolster their case that the country is plagued by ‘American carnage,’ as Mr. Trump put it…”

Because the real pattern here isn’t the crimes, it’s all the Republicans noticing them.

…despite statistics that show crime is dropping.”

Trust the science, dummy. If you’re worried about getting randomly shivved on a train, you’re anti-data and a science denier.

“Last year, conservatives successfully used the killing of a nursing student in Georgia, Laken Riley, by a Venezuelan immigrant who had entered the country illegally to stoke fears about immigrant crime.”

See, the story isn’t that last year a nursing student in Georgia was brutally killed by an illegal alien, or that the same thing happened to 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, or 21-year-old Joselyn Jhoana Toaquiza, or 11-year-old Maria Gonzalez, or 20-year-old Kayla Hamillton, or 37-year-old Rachel Morin, or 19-year-old Dacara Thompson, who was killed just two weeks ago. It’s that REPUBLICANS NOTICED.

“While some on the left point to data showing that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, some conservatives argue that any crime committed by someone in the country illegally could have been prevented by strict immigration enforcement.”

Did you notice that? The scholars on the left “point to data.” Meanwhile, the conservatives “use killing to stoke fears.”

Let’s look at that “data” they reference. It declares “there is no migrant crime surge” because (1) in 2020, illegal immigration dropped and murders rose, and (2) in 2021 and 2022, illegal immigration rose and murders dropped. I wonder what else might possibly have happened in 2020 that could have caused a rise in murders. Maybe defunding police departments and locking law-abiding citizens in their homes, ensuring public spaces were patrolled only by mentally ill drug addicts?

“Mr. Trump’s critics fear that he will use the death of Ms. Zarutska to justify sending federal troops into American cities, as he has already done in Washington…”

To paraphrase Norm Macdonald, what terrifies me is if a murderous lunatic were to kill an innocent young woman. Imagine the backlash by the National Guard against all the other peaceful criminals?

“…despite statistics showing a downturn in violent crime nationwide.”

There it is again. WHY ARE YOU STILL NOTICING THE CRIME? We told you, it’s going down!

The killer’s history was “troubled,” the Times said. The authors include some factual history about his previous 14 arrests. And then this:

“…a number of influential conservatives also accused major news outlets, including The New York Times, of ignoring the story because the crime was committed by a Black man against a white woman.”

Maybe, just maybe, they think that because of things like this:

But there’s nothing to that silly conservative talking point, our authors assure us, because people who are even further to the left than the Times are also accusing the media of being racist:

“The idea that mainstream news outlets downplay crimes committed by Black people has become more of a talking point in some conservative circles in recent years. The critique has emerged even as liberal critics of the news media have argued that crime coverage by American news outlets is distorted by anti-Black bias.”

And then we get to this vile line, in which the authors execute a sleight of hand that the media often use to associate their enemies with historical villains in an effort to smear and discredit them:

“In North Carolina, as in other Southern states, newspapers in the Jim Crow era often egregiously exaggerated stories about Black criminality. Among other things, such stories served as a precursor to a white supremacist uprising in Wilmington, N.C., in 1898, in which at least 60 Black men were killed.”

In other words, you can’t trust anything you hear from the right, even if it’s a murder captured on CCTV, because noticing a heinous murder and talking about it online is basically what all those racists did in To Kill a Mockingbird. Doing that can cause white supremacist uprisings. Therefore, Republicans are inciting racist violence by talking about what happened in Charlotte. Q.E.D.

The White House, the authors go on to say, “focused its wrath on North Carolina Democrats” with “targets” such as former Gov. Roy Cooper. Because if the Times is going to talk about “wrath” and “targets,” it’s not going to be about the schizo who stabbed a young woman and then appeared to mutter something about getting “that white girl,” it’s going to be about the orange man. The Times can’t just say that Cooper established a “racial equity” task force that let more criminals go free. They have to say that Donald Trump said it, which is a magical phrase every Times writer knows will automatically make their readers assume it’s not true.

The entire article is an exercise in lazy propaganda slop, and they don’t care if you notice. Just don’t go around noticing any more crimes.

Elle Purnell is the assignment editor at The Federalist. She has appeared on Fox Business and Newsmax, and her work has been featured by RealClearPolitics, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Independent Women’s Forum. She received her B.A. in government with a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @_ellepurnell.