Is there a conspiracy of silence at the state's largest newspaper regarding the brutal beating death of Aaron Hall of Crothersville in Jackson County?
One has to wonder. Attorney/blogger Gary Welsh at Advance Indiana has raised the same question on his blog, and suggested that Hall's murder bears hallmarks of a classic hate crime . . .
Welsh is well aware that the Star covered another grisley murder in Jackson County when a little girl, Katie Coleman, was abducted, raped and killed. That story had a lot of twists and turns; it took hard work from reporter Vic Ryckaert to stay on top of it. Also, the Star went to Fort Wayne to get the facts on journalism teacher Amy Sorrell, who was dismissed from her school for allowing a column about gay tolerance.
So why hasn't Aaron Hall's story been taken up? My guess is that the paper is so short-handed it can't spare reporters, but then again, everything is about priorities -- could somebody at the Star be blocing this story? My other speculation is that Jackson County is not in the Star's target zone for circulation. Why spend money to send a reporter out of town when the paper isn't readily available in that area? But with the push to online news, that makes no sense, either.
So once again, when it comes to how things are run at the Star, we have more questions than answers. Meantime, readers should demand more aggressive reporting.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Holladay: Aaron Hall Killed Twice, Second Time By Media
Blogger and former Star columnist Ruth Holladay wonders about the "conspiracy of silence" at the Indianapolis Star on the recent hate crime killing of Aaron Hall in Crothersville last month. Holladay wrtes about some of her own ideas on why the newspaper is not covering this compelling story:
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3 comments:
Unless it happens in Carmel, The Star won't report it.
There are lots of horrible murders the Star doesn't report about.
And there are any number of reasons - staffing, slow vs. fast news at the time of the event etc.
The Star also never wrote about Cheri Sue Hartman's death in Fort Wayne in 2002.
She was abducted, beaten and stripped, shot in the mouth and left dead in a cornfield. Then the group of people who did it went and bought gasoline and came back and set her body on fire.
After weeks about this subject, I still don't understand why the Hall case is any worse or deserves any more punishment than in cases such as Hartman's.
In response to anonymous said...
"After weeks about this subject, I still don't understand why the Hall case is any worse or deserves any more punishment than in cases such as Hartman's"
A BIG difference here would be that the two killers said their act was justifiable because they went crazy from being "propositioned" by another male.
I would call that a HUGE diffenece.
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