James Taranto makes the the point in a recent "Best of the Web" column that the media does us a grave disservice when they hide facts from the public that do not fit the media's narrative.
The case in point is the story of the US Marine Corps reservist that was found near Arlington Cemetery with a backpack carrying explosive components. It doesn't appear that he had a finished device, but he did have a laptop that contained words that were at the least suggestive of his mal-intent.
This particular Marine was born in Ethiopia and apparently is muslim.
The problem with the reporting is that only one media outlet deemed this Marine's faith to be worthy of reporting. All of the other media sources either didn't know, or didn't think it was relevant.
The media source that revealed his faith? FoxNews.
Those that didn't? Everyone else.
The obvious harm is that by withholding certain types of information, the media encourages speculation regarding other crimes where that information is irrelevant. One example would be the mass shooting in Orlando a while back. People were speculating that the killer was muslim when in fact the killer was a disgruntled former employee. His faith had nothing to do with motivating his crimes.
Everything relevant to a crime must be reported. A black kid beats up a white kid while shouting racist epithets? Then the race and the epithets had better be reported. Reverse the races? The same information needs to be reported.
In failing to do their job, the media harms us all.
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