Yesterday afternoon, two people were stabbed to death by a man who, according to witnesses, was hurling anti-Muslim slurs at a woman wearing a hijab on a Portland light rail train. (One other person was stabbed but the injuries will not kill them.) The suspect in the stabbing is Jeremy Christians, "a known local white supremacist." Despite the fact that the information we have about this deadly incident is pointing to terrorism, it is barely mentioned on major news websites. At this moment (9:30 am—over 15 hours after the incident), the GOP's website Fox News has nothing at all, and the same goes for the "liberal" MSNBC and center-right ABC News, which has a story about Trump calling his first formal international trip a "home run" and a picture of the Irish rock star Bono hanging out with George W. Bush.
NBC News has a small thing about a "ranting man" killing some people in Portland. The New York Times mentions the incident and its nature (the anti-Muslim threats), but it's not at the top of the page, and it's below a post about the Manchester bombing. CNN's website has the little story of a "man shouting 'anti-everything slurs'" (yes, "anti-everything"—meaning, the white suspect was just angry at the whole damn world and not telling Muslims to get out of America, as witnesses reported) tucked in the corner. CBS News buried the story beneath a post about the Wonder Woman movie, a video about the comedian Bill Burr, and huge pictures, one of which is of a buffoon trying to look presidential.
If you want to know why we have a racist as a president, or a white GOP politician who can choke and hit a reporter without fear of punishment, you only need to look at how stories of white terrorism are covered by the mainstream. If the suspect in the brutal Portland murders was identified as a Muslim, it would have been the top story yesterday and we would not hear the end of it today and tomorrow. You only have to go to mainstream networks at this very moment (9:30 a.m.) to see with your own eyes American racism doing its everyday thing.
UPDATE: ABC News finally has a post about the incident ("Man in custody over fatal stabbing of 2 in Oregon train incident involving hate speech"). It went up at 11:30 a.m.. It is not at the top of the page. There is no mention of terrorism. It was just some crazy white guy saying hateful things. Fox News has something if you look very closely near the bottom of the page. There you will find: "Two killed, one injured in stabbings on Portland light rail." ABC News finally has a post about the Portland murders ("Man in custody over fatal stabbing of 2 in Oregon train incident involving hate speech"). It went up at 11:30 a.m.. It is not at the top of the page. There is no mention of white supremacist terrorism. It was just some crazy white guy saying hateful things. Fox News has something if you look very closely near the bottom of the page. There you will find: "Two killed, one injured in stabbings on Portland light rail." Upon reading this, a person might think: Stay in car; stay away from public transportation. Fox News has basically transformed an incident that looks like white supremacist terrorism into a pro-car message.
The "liberal" MSNBC still has nothing to say (it's nearly 1 p.m.). But it does have a story about how Bill Clinton's staffers know all about scandal, as if Trump's scandals (obstructing an investigation, spying for the Russians, boasting about sexually assaulting women) are somehow the same as Clinton's. Nothing has changed on NYT's website.
