Asian-American Journalists Promote Media Coverup
04/17/2007
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This is pretty disgusting. To actually prevent people from knowing the shooter's race, you'd have to conceal his name—there are no non-Koreans named Cho Seung-Hui. This story is one of just eight (8) stories on Google News just now that that use the word "immigrant" in conjunction with Korean AND gunman.

Asian-American Journos Urge Media Not to Mention Race of Virginia Killer

By E&P Staff

Published: April 17, 2007 2:50 PM ET

NEW YORK The Asian American Journalists Association [Send them mail]has issued a statement calling on the media to avoid references to the race of Cho Seung-Hui, the student who killed 33 people at the Virginia Tech campus yesterday.

"There is no evidence at this early point that the race or ethnicity of the suspected gunman has anything to do with the incident, and to include such mention serves only to unfairly portray an entire people," the journalists' group said in a statement. "The effect of mentioning race can be powerfully harmful. It can subject people to unfair treatment based simply on skin color and heritage."

Additionally, the group's statement [Written by Janice Lee (send her mail)]said that it wished to remind the media that "the standards of news reporting should be universal and applied equally no matter the platform or medium, including blogs."

Cho was a 23-year-old South Korean immigrant who had been in the U.S. for 15 years. Early reports of the horrific massacre on Monday mentioned sources who incorrectly said the shooter was a Chinese national who had come in on a visa last year.

 

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