by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
august 20, 2004
In the early morning hours of last Saturday, a 17-year-old girl was walking along a residential street in Toronto’s trendy Beaches neighbourhood when she was approached by two men. They dragged into a nearby ravine where they began to remove her clothes.
But she wasn’t alone. She was with a group of friends and for some reason she managed to get ahead them. When her friends heard her scream, they ran into the ravine and the two attackers fled. The teen was traumatized but otherwise uninjured.
at the time of this writing, the two men are still at large. and if all of the media covered the story the way some did, they will probably remain at large.
The following descriptions were released by the police: attacker number one was a male with an olive complexion, approximately 20 years of age, 5 foot 7 with a slim to medium build. He was seen wearing a dark sweatshirt with a hood and dark pants. attacker number two was described as a male black in his late teens, 5 foot 4 with a slim to medium build. He was wearing a black long-sleeved sweater and dark pants.
The local Toronto television media; the stations that people who live in the Beaches and other areas of the city turn to when they want to see local news, ignored details of the descriptions that were released by the police. OMNI, Toronto’s multicultural stations merely announced that two men were being sought.
Citytv, the local station that undoubtedly provides more in-depth coverage of Toronto news than any other station, provided descriptions of the two men that were sought but conveniently omitted the fact that one had an olive complexion and the other male was black. It’s almost as if the station would rather these two men remain at large than "offend" some Toronto residents who might take the description as singling out blacks and other non-white minority groups.
Years ago, the media quite properly agreed not to release the race of people when it had no relevance to the story that they were reporting. This obviously doesn’t apply to descriptions of criminal suspects that are still on the loose.
It was absolutely flabbergasting that Citytv would provide a description of the attackers but leave the public not knowing whether they were white, black, asian or something else. While the description of their ages, builds and clothing were fairly general, the added information; that one had an olive complexion, the other was black, and that they were together last Friday night, might just lead to someone knowing who they are.
But for the politically correct lefties at City, it is more important to be politically correct than to take dangerous sex offenders off the street.
We really shouldn’t be surprised.