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Comment by opencl | Hacker News Reader

Poor people get murdered all the time, a rich person getting murdered is newsworthy.

If a poor person were murdered like this, it would be newsworthy.

The fact that this may be a politically charged murder makes it even more newsworthy.

I guess that depends if you meant murdered inside a $2.4 million dollar condo or in a sewer. The latter happens all the time and is ignored.

But a poor person being murdered inside a $2.4 million dollar condo in the same fashion is certainly newsworthy.

Who is getting cut up into a million pieces and dumped into the sewers? How common is such an occurrence?

No idea, but I can't sit here and pretend that every drug abusing/poor person/different race/what ever gets reported on. And that every single gruesome murder gets reported on.

Cause there is fair too much evidence both historically and current to say that is not the case.

Well, this incident did go viral the other month.

https://heavy.com/news/2020/06/watch-tiktok-video-seattle-de...

This is a quite hard question to answer, as if it's done correctly no-one will know and the person will simply vanish.

And there is of course countless reasons why someone vanishes, but then again, there is a lot of missing people: https://www.statista.com/statistics/240387/number-of-missing...

Those numbers are astounding.

Slightly south of half a million kids/teens go missing every year? And 150,000 adults?

How many of these cases are never closed?

> The vast majority of child abduction cases in the United States are parental kidnapping, where one parent hides, takes, or holds a child without the knowledge or consent of another parent or guardian.[3] Depending on the state and the legal status of the family members, this might not be a criminal offense. In 1976, parental kidnappings in the United States stood at 60,000.[clarification needed] By 1984, it was between 459,000 and 751,000.[citation needed] In 2010, the US Department of Justice reported 200,000 cases of parental kidnapping; these comprised both domestic and international abductions.[4]

> Fewer than 350 people under the age of 21 have been abducted by strangers in the United States per year between 2010–2017.[5]

> The federal government estimated about 50,000 people reported missing in 2001 who were younger than 18. Only about 100 cases per year can be classified as abductions by strangers.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_in_the_United_State...

There's a pretty good fiction book series called The Naturalist that uses these statistics as part of its discussion about serial killers.

There was (is?) a serial killer in LA killing homeless people with a bat in 2018/19 that got barely any news coverage.

Isn't a common practice for serial killer coverage to be limited? I thought this was intentional to not influence copy-cats and other mis/dis-information which muddy the investigation.

While withholding some details happens in murder cases, this is the first I've heard of there being voluntary editorial standards that restrict information about the murders of serial killers. In fact, you'd generally think there'd be a voluntary policy to do the opposite given their prevalence in modern media.

My understanding is that it's more of the cops withholding information than it is the media exercising restraint.

Happened atleast once in San Francisco - https://mashable.com/2015/01/29/body-parts-twitter-headquart...

> If a poor person were murdered like this, it would be newsworthy.

> The fact that this may be a politically charged murder makes it even more newsworthy.

No, it wouldn't be. And I can tell you why.

A suitcase stuffed with parts from two (recently) dismembered bodies was found on a Seattle beach two or three weeks ago. [1]

Neither of the deceased were tech entrepreneurs, and, unsurprisingly, this did not make Hacker News, nor more than a whisper on the national media circus. I presume you haven't heard about it, either.

Now, tell me, was that also a politically charged murder? [2] What makes you immediately ascribe the politically charged label to the tech entrepreneur case?

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=akai+beach+suitcase&oq=alki+...

[2] Hell, Seattle stopped talking about it after a few days.

I largely agree with the gist of your comment, but you may be overgeneralizing a little. Depending on, not sure how the describe it, gruesomeness of the kill, it may make national news. If the poor person is a woman, it is a little more likely. If it is a pregnant woman, it is a little more likely. If there was a rape, incest, or some weird sexual story attached to it, media might pick it up. If it was a child, it is a lot more likely. If it was displayed in some public fashion, it may be hard not to cover it.

Short answer is it depends. Not that long ago, white guy got killed by a hispanic guy in what police determined to be a hate crime( https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/wisconsi... ). There was no uproar on CNN. Oddly, I did not see stuff on Fox News either. For whatever reason, it simply did not feel the narrative.

I agree with your example that it is not a given that the killing was political in nature ( as in, we simply don't have enough information to know ). But today, non-white person dying draws a lot more scrutiny. Now serial killers will only be left with the homeless..

> Neither of the deceased were tech entrepreneurs, and, unsurprisingly, this did not make Hacker News,

Why did you expect? This is a community of programmers and tech entrepreneurs. We get articles all the time on the front page about deceased programmers, computer scientists, and tech entrepreneurs. This poor guy was a tech entrepreneur.

You removed from the OP quote:

> nor more than a whisper on the national media circus. I presume you haven't heard about it, either.

I was addressing his specific insinuation about HN. If this was just about national media, why even mention HN otherwise in that comment?

No, the clear implication was that there was some kind of double standard in HN here.

I'm not addressing the rest of his comment, which may or may not be true. But the first part is clearly misleading, or at best uncharitable.

Finally, the full comment is available for all to see by looking up exactly a quarter screen. I didn't "remove" anything-I pulled the quote pertaining to the issue that concerned me.

>If a poor person were murdered like this, it would be newsworthy.

This is wrong, unless you insinuate "if poor people were wealthy and powerful as well" when you say "murdered like this".

It seems like make believe to think we value all life regardless of their economic worth in the news headlines that we click on. In my community alone, mundane and powerless children and adults get shot, executed, dismembered semi-regularly and yet it's more of a statistic than something interesting for most folks, citations below.

I'm not saying that wealth and power are the only thing that makes a headline clickable, but jeez can it make it seem relevant to people in a world where poor people are disproportionately exposed to violence.

https://news.sky.com/story/william-algar-man-charged-with-mu...

https://www.fox19.com/2020/07/07/coroner-identifies-woman-fo...

https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-transgender-woman...

While true, I think the horrific nature of the murder is also what makes this newsworthy

This is NYC. A $2M condo is not that special.

Not even in a “where do you find them that cheap” way?

Ha. $2M is definitely well above the median. Most homes are under a $1M still. Bloomberg has these interesting charts comparing the citywide median, to Astoria and Tribeca.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/property-prices/nyc/

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