On August 22, Ukrainian national Iryna Zarutska, 23, boarded a light-rail car in Charlotte, North Carolina and never got off. On that train, she was brutally stabbed multiple times by a career criminal who had repeatedly been let out onto the street.
The worst part? That people are noticing, or at least that’s what the outlet Axios says.
The propaganda press at large has largely blacked out the gruesome story, with coverage missing from MSNBC, NBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, according to a cursory search. As the horrific slaying gained traction on social media, Axios’ Marc Caputo acknowledged the slaying — not to focus on Zarutska’s murder, but to scold people for talking about it.
“Stabbing video fuels MAGA’s crime message,” Caputo’s headline reads.
“MAGA influencers are drawing repeated attention to violent attacks to elevate the issue of urban crime — and accuse mainstream media of under-covering shocking cases,” Caputo wrote. But it’s not just “MAGA influencers” pointing out coroporate media’s pointed lack of interest in a story they would blow up if the victim and perpetrator’s skin colors were reversed, it’s Charlotte’s own mayor thanking the media for blacking out coverage!
“I want to thank our media partners and community members who have chosen not to repost or share the footage out of respect for Iryna’s family,” Mayor Vi Lyles posted on X.
But the problem for the media isn’t that sharing the footage would be disrespectful to Zarutska’s family. If that were the standard the propaganda press used, we’d have never seen the footage of George Floyd’s death.
Caputo himself unintentionally acknowledges the real reason the media is blacking out coverage: “The big picture,” he says, is that the increasing number of “surveillance cameras in public spaces…has become a big accelerant in these cases” and undermine “statistics showing crime decreases.”
The problem with sharing horrific footage is that people might see it, share it, and start asking questions about how Democrat-run cities are being managed. People might start asking why suspect DeCarlos Brown Jr., who had previously been convicted of with armed robbery, breaking and entering, shoplifting, and felony larceny, was arrested 14 times.
And never mind that major cities like Washington D.C., and Los Angeles have underreported violent crime categories — because according to Caputo, the “reality” is that while “Republicans have consistently highlighted crime, Democrats have accurately pointed out that violent crime rates have been decreasing since pre-pandemic highs.”
That’s why Axios is upset that the video is being shared: because it undermines Democrats’ narrative that crime is low and Democrat-run cities are safe.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
