The media’s Orwellian downplaying and suppression of the Virginia Tech decapitation continues

I wanted to see if there were any new facts—or, I should say, any facts at all—on the beheading of Chinese graduate student Xin Yang at Virginia Tech. I hoped to find some article that was not just another recycling of the costive AP article I’ve previously quoted—an article that, in the sort of unembarrassed, bald-faced manipulation of reality one would expect to find in a Soviet publication, skipped from the witnesses’ account of Xin Yang and her killer Haiyang Zhu sitting and talking quietly at a table in the coffee shop in the graduate students’ building before the murder, to the 911 call and the arrival of the police after the murder, with the murder itself not described or even mentioned, except for the bare summary statement in the article’s lead sentence, “A graduate student from China was decapitated with a kitchen knife in a campus cafe at Virginia Tech.” You see, I’m a weird guy, and when I hear that a graduate student has been beheaded by another graduate student in front of seven other graduate students in a coffee shop in a university in Virginia in the United States of America, I’m sort of curious to know what actually happened.

A Google search for “xin yang” and “decapitated” produced links to a bunch of obscure blogs plus three foreign papers. There was no point in clicking on any of those, as they would just repeat the AP. There was a link to Fox News, but I know that story and it copies the AP. Then I saw a link to an article at the Chicago Tribune. Ok, I thought, that’s a major American newspaper, maybe they’ve generated their own information on the murder. At the top of the article, it said, “Tribune staff report.” Ahh! Something not copied from the AP! But when the Tribune article gets to the scene of the murder here is what it says:

Haiyang and Xin had been having coffee in a cafe in the Graduate Life Center, where Xin was living. About seven other people who were in the coffee shop told police that the two hadn’t been arguing before the attack.

Police received two 911 calls shortly after 7 p.m. Wednesday, Flinchum said, and were on the scene in a little more than a minute to take Haiyang into custody.

This is an exact copy of the account in the original AP article, jumping surrealistically from the two students talking before the murder, to the 9/11 call and the arrival of the police after the murder, with no account of the murder itself, no account of what the seven witnesses in the coffee shop saw during the murder, no account of what the seven witnesses did during the murder.

And, just so you don’t have to take my word for it, here is the AP article:

Haiyang and Xin had been having coffee in a cafe in the Graduate Life Center, where Xin was living. About seven other people who were in the coffee shop told police that the two hadn’t been arguing before the attack.

Police received two 911 calls shortly after 7 p.m. Wednesday, Flinchum said, and were on the scene in a little more than a minute to take Haiyang into custody.

I’m so glad that the Tribune put their crack reporting staff to work on this horrible crime.

However, with a different Google search, looking for “xin yang” and “virginia tech” without looking for “decapitated,” I found some new information in an article at the Washington Post by Brigid Schulte. It tells a lot about Zhu’s two-week long mentor-like relationship with Xin Yang, and about his difficult personality, including this:

Still, Will Segar, Zhu’s landlord at Blacksburg’s Sturbridge Square Apartments, said Zhu acted “strange” and was often “hostile and belligerent.”

Echoes of Cho-Seung Hu, the Virginia Tech mass murderer.

Schulte also gives, at the 11th paragraph of the article, for the first time I’ve seen in any news coverage, some concrete facts about the murder, or rather about its immediate aftermath:

Authorities gave this account: Virginia Tech police, responding to two frantic 911 calls about 7 p.m. Wednesday, found Zhu standing in the Au Bon Pain cafe on campus, with Yang’s severed head in his hands, according to an affidavit. A large, bloody kitchen knife lay nearby, and Zhu’s backpack, on the floor, was filled with other sharp weapons. Seven people witnessed the attack, which came without as much as a raised voice as the two drank coffee.

But what did those seven witnesses see? Schulte doesn’t tell us. Indeed, the story never says that Haiyang Zhu decapitated or beheaded Xin Yang. The headline makes no mention of the decapitation:

Virginia Tech Suspect Served as Victim’s Mentor on Campus

Nor does the rest of the article. A story about a decapitation on a college campus, and the article never uses the words “decapitated” or “beheaded.” It only describes the static tableau of Zhu holding Yang’s severed head in his hands.

- end of initial entry -

Terry Morris writes:

Sorry, I want to honor your request that correspondents not write and tempt you, but I had to comment on this bizarre story.

You’ll recall that a couple of years ago (if memory serves) there was the incident in the Chicago bar where an off-duty police officer attacked a female bartender on duty. My comment, and perhaps what interests me most about the two incidents, has to do with the bystanders who in both cases did nothing to try to stop these crimes. In the case of the attack of the bartender—a powerful man attacks a weak woman (tough guy!)—there were a number of men who stood by and did nothing to stop the attack, and/or video taped it. To be honest with you, I don’t know who the biggest coward in the bar was that night, the attacker, or the men who stood back and watched it. Likewise with the other incident.

An anecdote:

Back when I was in the military, stationed in Alaska, my wife and I and our son were on our way to the baby-sitter early one morning as my wife had a doctor’s appointment that morning. We came upon a stop light where traffic was seven or eight cars deep in all lanes. As I was slowing, a man darted (on foot) in front of my vehicle, which caused me to slam the brakes. As I looked over to my left I saw that he had a tire-tool in his right hand which he was trying to hit another man with. Before I knew what was happening, I had put the car in park, exited the vehicle and gotten between the two men. I had both of the attacker’s arms firmly held in each of my hands. And I kept trying to persuade him to “calm down,” because he had a crazed look in his eye, and he kept trying to jerk his hands free, which I would not allow. But another fellow got involved and distracted my attention for a split second, at which point my opponent managed to free the hand in which he held the tire-tool. As he pulled his arm back in an obvious attack posture, uh, well, let’s just say that I preempted his attack with an attack (and “beat-down”) of my own. And that was that, except for the police chase that ensued shortly afterward, and a statement I gave to the police once they finally stopped him. But that’s beside the point.

I’ve heard it said before that there are three kinds of people in the world, (1) those who take charge in a crisis situation, (2) those who are willing to act, but need someone to tell them what to do, and (3) those who simply stand by and watch; they neither act, nor are willing to act when prompted. I think that why this interests me is that one would think that with seven other people present in this case, and several other men present in the other case, there would be at least one who was a “take-charge” type personality; one person willing to place himself in jeopardy to save the life of the other, and to give directions to those possessing of the second personality. But no. What the hell is happening to our society???

LA replies:

It’s a partial hiatus. This story I had to follow up on.

I’m not sure these are fair comparisons to the VT situation. By the time the students in the campus cafe realized anything was happening, the victim was probably already dead. Physically stopping the killer from doing more at that point would have required grappling with a crazed beheader with a large knife. I suppose there were other things they could have done, like throwing chairs at him. But remember, we still don’t know ANYTHING about what happened between the time when the two were talking quietly and the arrival of the police, except that Xin Yang was beheaded.

Roland D. writes:

Kitty Genovese wept.

LA replies:

I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. In the Kitty Genovese murder, the attack went on for some time, with Kitty Genovese repeatedly crying for help, and all that people had to do was call the police from the safety of their apartments. Here the witnesses would have to expose themselves to likely death at the hands of a killer on a rampage with a large knife; furthermore, given the suddenness of the attack, without even a raised voice beforehand, the victim was probably already dead or having her throat cut by the time the witnesses became aware of what was happening.

Charles T. writes:

I would like to know more details as well. I offer two reasons the media is deficient:

1. Such incidents are so shocking to the sensibilities that no one wants to describe it in detail.

2. The details are deliberately sanitized due to political correctness.

Since our media loves sensationalism—if it bleeds, it leads—and since our media is hopelessly politically incorrect, and since the person who did this vile deed is non-white, I pick number two. I do not watch much TV. Has anyone seen any major TV stories on this case?

I would also like to know if anyone tried to intervene. From the outcome of the case it does not seem likely. I can understand hesitating to take on a crazed person with a butcher knife in one hand. One must possess a good deal of upper body strength and the will to act to go hand- to -hand with someone armed like this. A chair or any type of hard object broken over his back or head is an option that possibly could have given the girl time to escape. Granted, if the man is high on a drug, it would be difficult to stop him with any means. This poor lady was doomed. And worse, no one seems to care. This is one of the most frightening cultural developments of our modern age; the continual destruction of innocent humans at the hands of vile murderers does not elicit disgust in our population the way it once seemed to do. We have indeed become like the beasts that perish.

Sarcasm on: We should be hearing about legislation on knife control in the coming months. Yes. That should really clear up crime. Sarcasm off.

Roland D. replies to LA:

A towel or a shirt is a pretty effective tool to get a knife away from someone. And in a cafe or coffee shop, there’s boiling water, chairs, various other types of noxious substances, and even knives.

Ed L. writes:

The Associated Press (AP) seems to be a pretty close realization and embodiment of an Orwellian central thought control body. It results in the same words being mindlessly recycled through thousands of mouths and print columns.

It’s a bit mystifying, then, that it’s able to retain its faceless mystique and escape the kind of partisan scorn that the New York Times (“Pravda on the Hudson”) does. We never hear about AP in terms of having any kind of partisan slant, or about the kinds of minions who populate its ranks.

LA replies:

That’s an excellent insight about the AP.

January 26

Terry Morris replies to LA:

You’re right. Any conclusions we come to on this particular case involves a certain amount of speculation on our parts. After all, even your “by the time they realized anything was happening, the victim was probably dead already,” involves a degree of blind speculation. Why? Because, as you’ve pointed out in the article, the media is silent on all the details of what happened during the actual murder, as it is silent about who the seven witnesses were; what their genders were (how many males, how many females); what was their proximity to the crime?; did any of them try to intervene in any way, physically or audibly, directly or indirectly?, and so forth and so on.

The bottom line is we just don’t know anything other than that there were seven other persons present who witnessed the commission of this barbaric crime. Given what we know (or don’t know) it is simply impossible to form any accurate conclusions on this beyond what the media is reporting.

January 29

LA writes:

See followup to this entry: “The liberal media’s Orwellian method of non-coverage coverage.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 25, 2009 01:24 AM | Send