Coverage Of Virginia Teen’s Murder Exposes Media Manipulation
The brutal murder of 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen in June 2017 gained a lot of media attention when it was suspected she might be the victim in a hate crime.
Hassanen was walking back to her mosque in the suburbsof Virginia with friends after breaking fast during Ramadan. A strangerapproached in a car, got out to chase Hassanen before beating her to death witha baseball bat.
That stranger turned out to be Darwin Martinez Torres, an El Salvadoran illegal alien. After an investigation, police determined there was no evidence of a hate crime. But, it was found to be an illegal alien crime. And those receive far different coverage from the media elite. While Hassanen was frequently described as a Muslim teen, Torres was never (and correctly) identified as her illegal alien murderer.
Any doubts? Simply consider how the media handled thesentencing of Torres to life in prison.
In its lede, The Washington Post characterized him as “a Loudon County man” and then identified him in the next paragraph described him “Darwin Martinez Torres, 25, of Sterling.”
The paper also found it important to note thatTorres’ defense attorney believed he had an IQ of 68 or less and “is probablyintellectually disabled from exposure to toxins from a mine near his childhoodhome in his native El Salvador.”
The paper failed to mention, however, that hewas a citizen of El Salvador who was in the country illegally.
In the opening of a story that was carried by multiple outlets nationwide, The Associated Press simply called him “a man” and like the Post, described him in the second paragraph as “Darwin Martinez Torres of Sterling [Virginia].”
Although less outrageous than the Post handling,the AP stumbled over how to phrase the killer’s immigration status when it didfinally addressed it in the sixth paragraph. Rather than stating the fact thatTorres was in the country illegally, the AP said he was “a native of ElSalvador who federal immigration authorities have said is in the countryillegally.”
The local Washington, D.C., radio station, WTOP, had an online story which followed suit by first referencing him as a “Northern Virginia man” and only three lines from the end of the story do they mention Torres was an illegal alien.
Even the local Loudoun Times could not help butdownplay his immigration status, while playing up the religious background ofthe victim. The media’s evasive reporting and politically-correct languagemakes them feel better about themselves, but it does cannot cover up the factthat Darwin Martinez Torres is an illegal alien who should never have been inVirginia driving a car and ready to kill.
Two outlets which rightly noted in the headline that Torres was “illegal” were The Boston Globe and Breitbart News.
If a majority of the news media cannotaccurately write about the sentencing of an illegal alien murderer, how can theAmerican people trust them on any other matter related to immigration?